skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interacting with people online just doesn't feel real in the same way. I know I'm guilty of being trollish and harsh, and it can be very easy when the other person is just a handle. Without the tangible interaction of real life, impulses and the desire to act like someone else can get the better of me.

The other side of the coin is that internet culture is also addicted to low level trolling. To be noticed, you have to be cutting in what you say, just look at who gets voted up on reddit and digg.
"Drink enough beer and you'll see our logo on the moon"

Being able to use the moon as an advertising billboard would be an interesting achievement. I somehow doubt it will happen anytime soon though and I'm curious of other details like who is in charge of regulating advertising on the moon?
It'll be interesting if the tech progresses enough that people can be entirely self produced with little instrument playing ability. I wonder if that would change the music scene much?
Ask YC: How much compensation does a pre-revenue company offer an early outside director?
We have a large list of potential external directors for our board, but I've been putting off approaching them in early stages. I don't want to do that much longer.

What kind of compensation makes sense to offer the first outside director(s) for a small startup? The last thing I want to do is make an offer that might inadvertently be insulting or one that is too much. I just really don't have an idea of what is common practice.

Just to give back a bit for your great advice, so far the best resource I've found for helping entrepreneurs form their board is here:
http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/Corporate/Corporate_Governance_Guide.pdf
For example of already-thought-of important ideas, William Godwin is very neglected. In part due to sexual scandal -- basically just sex outside marriage which was a lot worse then (1800ish). In part due to honest memoirs about his dead wife Mary Wollstonecraft (the first feminist). Partly due to the getting lumped in with French Revolution supporters. But in the long run, mostly because his ideas are not popular.

Of the few people who've heard of him, most only care because they like the history of England or anarchist political philosophy (he's sometimes called the first anarchist, but I don't think that's true). Most neglect one of his top 2 books:

The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature

(His other best book is called Political Justice, and the subject matter is the reason that it's better known.)

BTW, his books are out of copyright, so you can legally download them for free. See here: http://curi.us/main/godwin_download

Here's a quote:

Let us consider the effect that coercion produces upon the mind of him against whom it is employed. It cannot begin with convincing; it is no argument. It begins with producing the sensation of pain, and the sentiment of distaste. It begins with violently alienating the mind from the truth with which we wish it to be impressed. It includes in it a tacit confession of imbecility. If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.

Consider the consequences of this insight not only for spanking children, but also for ordering them about or punishing them. Restrict your reflections to children over age 6 if you want, just to make the situation more clear.

There's lots more where that came from.
Oh ! and we are taught to eat children too !
For example, if I were sufficiently famous, I would be invited to give a TED talk. That's valuable.

Certainly there are different types of fame, and something more along the lines of 'influential' is better than the type where people want to know who you're dating.
Never heard of this law firm, but there's some stellar startup guides/PDFs
Such things already existed.
Kinda fun looking. Seems like it relies pretty heavily on singing well and on pitch without accidentally changing key. One hour of American Idol'll point out how few people have that ability.
Thanks for the comments. Coming from Ottawa, I think I can handle most of the problems you mention. I'd probably want to avoid the burbs, since more traffic == less time for side projects.
Maybe they're releasing these to draw in clients? Here are two of the gems I found so far:

http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/Corporate/2007_...

http://www.fenwick.com/docstore/Publications/Corporate/Corpo...

Covering initial capital structure, the makeup of early startup boards, etc. Really good stuff.

I've seen nothing of this quality for free out there. Here's an example note from the 2007 Guide to Starting a Corporation:

"The per share value at the time of founding is determined by the cash purchases of stock and the number of shares issued. For example, if one founder buys stock in exchange for technology and the other founder buys a 50% interest for cash, the value of the technology and the fair market value per share is dictated by the cash purchase since its monetary value is certain."
have you checked out barcamp sydney??

also checkout tangler (www.tangler.com) - youl bump into quite a few!!
by the way that is barcampsydney.org
"... I heard it at Startup School '06 - I think at the mixer the night before. ..."

Excellent, thanks. Shows there's a bit more in the talks than the writing , mp3's etc.
Yeah its a slow transition. Dont waste too much time trying to "decide" between a language. I just plunged into python (sorry all RoR fans out there, nothing personal)...

django is a great framework for beginners.. start with sqlite for a quick db to use with django then get to postgres as soon as you can.
Thanks. Well, 600-700k is less expensive than equivalent housing out here, so I'll have to keep Newton in mind.
You make a very good point about the kind of discussion a question like that should bring up. The problem is it depends on the teachers to lead the class in that direction. I've seen far too many folks however not make that logical next step (not with this particular problem).

For example in the restaurant business on average 10% of the sales price of an item goes towards the food itself (leaving aside super expensive restaurants). Most folks see this and somehow feel they are being robbed of their hard earned cash for having to pay such a "premium". Few take the time to think about other associated costs such as the cost of operating the physical restaurant (employees, the building, utilities, the tables, chairs, silverware, etc).

I really hope that you are right regarding where that question was supposed to lead.
I think PAIP is underrated (or maybe just unknown) because a) AIMA replaced it as the go-to AI text, b) there's no free online version (unlike SICP, PCL, OnLisp, etc), c) it's expensive. But it's probably my favorite of all the Lisp books I'm looking at now.
"... We did have one of the big accounting firms ... I might have said in a talk somewhere that this helped us seem legit ..."

Thanks for the confirmation. I'd never come across the accounting angle before. Was this later in the startup process where some recognition of Viaweb, introduction or wads of cash like the PR firm?

No stone unturned hey. Didn't think you would have to work that hard at it :)
A nice thank you card? You have to start somewhere.
I sure hope that some of the things they were saying are false, not just biased. I really hope that textbooks do not contain some of the material this article claims they do.
A lot of the comments here seem to think you can dismiss an article by detecting its bias. You need to actually refute an argument with facts to to dismiss it right?
I prefer AIM to voice chat. It's easier to write precisely than speak precisely. And it's easier to understand just what someone is saying when you can reread bits.
if you don't get it, you might not belong here. (hate to be so real)
Good stuff. Yeah, I think calling children unreasonable is taking the easy way out and a way of avoiding hard questions. But, I'm not a parent, I've only been a child.
I wouldn't call 11.7% unemployment doing fine: http://www.heritage.org/index/country.cfm?id=Germany
The theory that you have to be a parent to make comments about parenting is really annoying. It's not a serious, logical position, it's just a way to shut people up.

BTW Godwin was a parent, so one can't say it about his stuff anyway.
Um, that was the source article!
The waterfall trap for “agile” projects
I would think Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by the gang of four is the most famous -- I can't say I've read any books on programming that I felt were "memorable"
The Charms of Wikipedia (first-hand account of "inclusionist" vs. "deletionist" war)
I'm not entirely certain I buy the argument that software which has lower CPU and memory utilization on average is better (on the server).

The server is sitting there with all the ram and CPU and 2% or 20% doesn't make a difference if there is nothing else to take advantage of that other 98 to 80%. The only thing that matters is the ability to handle peaks (and being reliable).

You want server software that is optimized around the worst case scenario (unless you want to run your software on servers with little resources in which case it's the other way around).

So if nginx can handle higher loads than pound, it's a better load balancer. But if it keeps my servers at 2% most of the time but does worse under high loads then it's no good.

Now I wouldn't use Pound either for load balancing and I believe nginx should be better, but the data in this article doesn't really support that argument.
No. I'll get a very smart computer from IBM to do it for me.
Well, I wouldn't take it that far but you have a good point. If you never heard "it's a feature, not a bug" you haven't done serious development (or have been hacking in your basement for far too long without talking to anybody).

On the other hand it's not just experienced programmers that hang out here.
The future will not be dull, we can at least be sure of that ;)
Far better, yet a lot of folks wouldn't get it. Even with the current title not everyone seems to understand it.
Hmm. Back of the envelope calculation:

In order to project something on the moon to have it visible during a full moon, you'd want the projection to be at least as bright as the sunlight hitting the full moon (about 1 kW per square metre).

In order to have a readable logo you'd probably need it to cover at least, say, 1% of the moon's visible surface area (about 9 million square km).

So that's 9e12 * 1000 * 0.01, or about 9e13 watts, which happens to be about fifty times more power than is produced by all the power plants in the world put together.

So I'm thinking that's a no.
"he was very intelligent, with lots of talents and skills, and this was not his whole life. Pointing to blogging and the media just trivializes a man whose life was not trivial.”

I'm not fully sure if bloggers drove him to this. On the other hand I have no respect for folks who cowardly publish information to smear others without identifying themselves. If I don't feel comfortable having my name associated with something I write then I probably shouldn't write it.

There are of course exceptions, but if you feel you need to remain anonymous let someone else post the information, someone who isn't ashamed to stand by what they write.
Had to stop reading. Too hagiographic. Facebook is a myspace clone. STOP. Firefox is mozilla minus some cruft. STOP. Youtube had been done a thousand times before. STOP. It's obvious that they all did something right but let's not pretend that they are all Edisons and Teslas.
Robert X. Cringely has been harsh to Sun over the years:

Sun did not invent the engineering workstation, but they certainly perfected it. But where are workstations today? Gone, for the most part. Sun's workstation business is about the same size as SGI's, which is to say small. Sun is now a server company, but that won't last long either under the onslaught of Linux. Cheap Intel and AMD hardware running Linux is going to kill Sun unless the company does something so stop it, which they aren't. -- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2003/pulpit_20030213_0007...

A lot of this comes down to how companies view themselves and what they are really good at. You'll notice, for example, that I didn't include Sun in my list of vital companies. That's not so much because Sun can be defined in terms of the others but that Sun is simply doomed. Their software isn't better, their hardware isn't better, and they can't see themselves as anything but a maker of hardware or software, so my simple recommendation is that they take the rest of their cash and try entering a hot new field like -- say -- space flight. Or making really fine cakes. The world will always need fine baked goods. Or just give it back to the shareholders. Really. -- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060504_0008...

Remember my doom-and-gloom prediction last week for Sun Microsystems? That's based almost entirely on the company's inability to see itself moving from being vertically integrated (doing its own proprietary hardware and software) to competing on a level (that is horizontal) playing field. While that might make them just another PC vendor, don't worry about that happening because Sun would rather die first. And will. -- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060511_0008...

If he's right then it will be interesting to see the details unfold. If he's wrong then it will be interesting to see Sun re-invent itself.
You mean your monitor isn't tall enough to see below her neck? :)
cough snaptalent..
seems a little (a lot!) self serving. They have money to buy whatever they want, but yet - seem to be a tad empty.
I did/do that and while I can sell small ad spots for a good amount (enough to pay rent at times) it is _very_ hard to find companies willing to advertise a single-author blog like mine.
maybe some kind of orbiting device that filters light...like shadow puppets on the moon. ;-)
I'm curious where Sun is heading. As far as I can tell they're running out of options. With commodity servers and free operating systems what are they going to sell? I guess for the near futures there will still be business run by people that believe an "enterprise infrastructure" means buying expensive software and hardware, but as that population ages and retires I'm curious who will continue to buy this stuff.
why exclude anyone? i got the joke but there's tons of other stuff that's posted here, that i don't understand, and may never understand. who cares?

great things happen when people from different backgrounds collaborate. i think hacking is independent of medium.
The central argument from the book The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil is on his website ( http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 ). It was almost completely ignored when it was posted to this forum a few days ago ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126183 ).
Emmett, what tool did you use to collect the data and make the graph?
What is your opinion on Jaanix? Does it work for you? Is it better than reddit?
Ray Kurzweil argues that we can eventually brute force the solution. However, we can do it more efficiently if we do it at a functional level. Basic acoustic function given as an example ( http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 ).
Feature request: Guitar, organ etc.... think casio piano - in tune with your voice. (perhaps a add on to all electric keyboards?)

Teaching tool?

Microsoft?
No in-depth conclusions just a bunch of general observations that could be applied to any sort of development.
I'm interested in what you say about trolls, but I don't think it's easy to know why this man committed suicide. We interpret these things through the filter of our own preexisting opinions. It's entirely conceivable that he would have done so even if people hadn't said harsh things about him on blogs.

Something about the phrase "driven to suicide" bothers me. It reduces the element of choice involved. Even if someone left a suicide note saying "Trolls made me do it," it wouldn't make it true.
It wouldn't have to be visible to the naked eye. For Coke's purposes it would be enough for it to show up in highly magnified photos. And once the logo gets smaller you can project it into the shadow of a crater rim. You'd want to put a small logo next to a crater anyway, since otherwise it wouldn't look moony enough in a magnified shot.

...this feels alarmingly like what I do in my day job.
Given the nature of browsers that would be counterproductive: one can easily setup browsers to open new tabs with the middle mouse button, but there's no way to stop new tabs/windows from being opened as such.
Okay, so what about projecting on to a new moon instead? You'd need a lot less brightness; aside from not having to be brighter than the sun, it's naturally darker at night with a new moon...
I use DynDns; they do yearly fees of around $60 (depending on what you want) and its very solid. They also have great customer support, so its easy to ask questions at any time.
Is this site yours? If so you should say so.
Skynet really exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellites%29
Its been condensed to "Do no evil".
Seriously, though, there will be no use for you (or any other human) whatsoever post-AI.

And that's the best-case scenario—when AI is being used for the common good. If the people with early access to it try to use it to rule the world and enslave humanity, they'll probably succeed.

I'm not trying to be an irrational doomsday predictor, here; these are just the conclusions that I come to when I work off of the premise "humanity will have access to cheap human-level intelligences".
Of course the evidence is far from conclusive without more data. But Pound has had terrible performance so far, and based on what data I have nginx is an order of magnitude more efficient.
That's a graph straight from Ganglia (http://ganglia.sourceforge.net/), which is what we use to monitor our servers.
Ahem ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128158 ).
What can I say, I don't actually know JS. I just cargo-culted this from another similar script.
No. It is absolutely not. I just found it on reddit the other day and thought it was interesting. I think it is an intriguing idea but I don't think it will work because tagging cannot capture enough information about a particular web page. Personally I didn't find it to be very useful, but I was wondering what other people's opinions are.
as much as people rave about rails, python or any other language, the web actually runs mostly on java (and some .net). Most financial sites, brokerage houses, banks and many more websites run with java.

Just b.c you hear about rails or django all the damn time, doesn't mean they are widely used. They are just trendy frameworks.

(Php is the other language that run the rest of the web.).
It is not just tags, it is using a netflix like recommendation system inside.
I'm a founder of jaanix. Just a bit of background - jaanix is not a regular social news site. First of all everything is personalized - and not just by tweaking some settings or selecting your favorite tags, but in a machine learning way - the system tries to guess what you will like and acts accordingly. It uses implicit feedback too, so it tracks your clicks and tries to learn from it, but you can always see how it learned and what it thinks about you in the sliders.
It's a clumsy polemic -- but doesn't the author make an evidence-based case?

The polls show greater public suspicion of markets and business in France and Germany. (Is anyone surprised?) Levels of entrepreneurial participation are lower in those countries than in the US. And, the schools and textbooks promote economic beliefs that ensure continued suspicion of markets and businesses, and lower entrepreneurial participation, in the future.

(US schools don't promote the same attitudes -- at least not until college. :)

Ignoring the author's opinion about which way is better, he's identified a real contrast in culture and education which helps explain differences in economic activity.

France and Germany are fine places, but would you expect to migrate there to start or join a young high-growth, high-tech business? How about compared to California, Texas, or most other states?
The main purpose of the site is to let you find stuff that you will not find on other popularity based systems. I find stuff that is on the front page of digg or reddit almost 100% noise, at the same time, the posts that I care about are buried or ignored by the majority. jaanix is not a democracy, it is more of a trading place for links. Your reputation matters, your feedback matters, the quality of the links matters. In return jaanix will try to give you stories just for you.
And discrimination.
From the article: Log analysers are not accurate. They over-report visits and over-count some browsers while under-counting other browsers. They cannot accurately distinguish spiders and robots from human visitors and they do not use fool-proof techniques for counting visits and visitors.

Would you use the program that tells you that you've had 1 million users or 100 million users? Even if you're objective, the market is skewed by those who are less objective.
Awesome! 2 Years ago, in college, a buddy and I built the same thing. Our "RFID beverage dispenser" was mostly PC software driven using a USB rfid reader, solenoid valve and key fob. Our goal was to sell these to local bars as self service, self monitoring beer dispensers which could have the ability to monitor a persons BAC. Fun project for sure!
A Virtual Travel Agent With All the Answers
i prefer a proxy balancer that is smart enough to know when the back-end servers (mongrels in this case) are busy or not, and smart enough that it doesn't send requests to back-end servers that are down (i'm looking at you, apache mod_proxy_balancer)
The Billion Dollar Line of JavaScript: document.f.q.focus();
Yeah I have to say, I'm fairly new to programming, but not to computers and systems by any means. I've built websites and worked with people to build websites, I've installed and worked with linux, helped friends and family with many computer issues, and I've even built an almost-battlebot (never got to compete).

At least I'm learning. I think I have the hacker personality, and I undoubtedly have an entrepreneurial side to go with it.

Anyways, it's a funny joke.
Fenwick is a very well established tech law firm. They host a number of events at their Mountain View headquarters every month, see http://www.fenwick.com/fenwickfocus/1.6.0.asp

Fred Greguras, author of the 2007 Corporation Starting Guide runs multiple workshops and bootcamps every year on the topic, normally in conjunction with a non-profit association.
Because I am focused on building OpenDNS (profitable, hiring, etc).

EveryDNS is a usability nightmare. The service is TOP NOTCH and RELIABLE but the website needs an overhaul. I cry myself to sleep every night thinking about it. :-)
Jaanix is a segway into a broader platform. It's great but needs work.
I bet you found it on jaanix :) Congrats!
See http://venturehacks.com/articles/advisors-part-2 for a good discussion, normally 1-2% of common but it's a negotiation. If you really mean early advisors it may be more like 0.1-0.25% of common, but again it's a negotiation. They have a good quote from Warren Buffet “make sure that, for the people that count to you, you count to them.”