skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That was a long, yet good read. I too have read Built to Last, and I'm rather surprised that by following the book's convictions, he got himself into trouble.

I guess the main lesson I took away was to live well below your means, both in personal life and in business, because you don't know what the future's going to be like. Projected sales of veggietales was way off mark that he kept approving expenses in ventures and territories he wasn't experienced in.
I wouldn't care much about money either if my parents paid for everything ;)

Release it. If it's really amazing then you'll make a name for yourself. And then if you want to move on to the "next big thing" then you should have a bunch of people that are willing to invest in your ideas.
I got one of these right after they came out, too. Having had no experience with Linux before then, I've spent more than 15 minutes at a time figuring out how to get things to work. Right away, it was a couple nights on nvidia driver and wpa support. And since then, about once a month, I'll have to spend a whole night or two figuring something else out... last weekend it was something with generic vs rt kernels for ubuntustudio. Anyhoo, looking back, I wouldn't suggest it to any relative novices (like me) who really just want to use their computer to accomplish normal tasks, and who aren't into tinkering for the sake of it. Gnome/KDE in K/Ubuntu are really convenient and slick 29/30 days, but to be honest, I'm getting tired of fighting my computer and I'll likely pick up a Mac when I get a new desktop this summer.
Seems like it is not only the American economy that is being assaulted by the Chinese.
I can't quite tell if you are serious or not.

"What I've got: a drawing board at transmuting WordNet <wordnet.princeton.edu> into a virtual spacetime, over which meaning is generated, amalgamated into cosmic structures, rather than extracted."

So... you would like to create a virtual spacetime consisting of cosmic structures from a lexical database (WordNet)?

So... each word would be like a body of mass (like a planet), and each cluster would be like a solar system, and so on?

Are you able to 'say it straight' instead of 'saying it clever'? I would describe your current contributions as pompous.

Damn, I must be naive to respond to this :-(
I think It's clear that what is important is the skill that this person has. However, this is likely a good indicator that the student has not put a lot of energy into the field beyond what was required for class.
"the rest of the manufactures are behind mac in display tech."

I was looking at macbooks, but did not see one that had a 15" screen that ran 1920x1200.

I went with a Dell D830, for the 15" WUXGA screen and for the clit mouse (since I find trackpads distracting and less precise than the TrakPoint thingie).

I'm (more or less) happily running Kubuntu on it.
No.
This site is about discussion, and the questions are appreciated for the discussions that ensue, not because they are so helpful to the askers
"... Should a senior in Comp Sci know what a .tar file is? ..."

This is a statement telling me what the comp-sci is not doing:

- not interested in "systems" by not downloading installing free operating systems & servers

- not interested in software "tools" by not using free software compilers downloading new & interesting code to sample and understand

- not interested in "making things" because a lot of software is still delivered as source code wrapped in tar.

- just plain not interested

From physicists to chemists, archaeologists to biologists people in science use, hack and develop their own tools on computers to solve their problems and would most likely encounter tar.

$ tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz

The computer is just another tool. For comp-sci's to not know what a ".tar", how it works [0] is just plain ignorance of the worst kind.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(file_format)
Thanks, will definitely give it a shot.
"... You are wrong to suggest that you have to convice your friend to get on this ... Your friends don't even need to be on chatterous to stay connected to you. ..."

I missed that bit. How?

"... Your friends don't need to sign up Your friends don't need to sign up to chat with you! They can reply right on their im, email or phone. ..." ~ http://www.chatterous.com/faq/

Ah so users to contact a group "foo" would google mail, email "foo@chatterous.com", or "text CHTR foo <msg> to 41411" then?

How do they get the message? Do they still have to sign up to see it?
Damn. I want to be that high. I want to know what blue tastes like!!!
I multitask, in fact I'm completely capable of doing two seperate things at once without a problem. Although they have to be different tasks. It's psychologically proven that you can't do two things at once using the same area of your brain, and this does impede performance. Example: You're seriously crippled if you try to draw a tree when you're being told to imagine a cat. You can, however, draw a tree easily when you're told to count to 15 bajillion because Math has its own processing area to imagination. In fact, some people can learn ways around things like being told to count while reading a book as they'll count visually instead of verbally and this uses different imagination/processing centres (for more information see: Baddeley's Model of Working Memory).

Today I was plastering a wall (you know the thing people used to do to walls to make them look pretty before they invented drywall) and the entire time my mind was in a completely different world to my body. So much so, that the entire time I was coming up with plot ideas for my writing (which have now been written up), and when I wasn't doing that my mind somehow ressurected the Ewok song from Episode VI; I can tell you, singing the Ewok song for an hour is seriously harmful to your brain.

The thing is, this happens to me daily at work. The entire time I'm working, my mind is barely on the job because 95% of it is merely repeating actions I've done before. Essentially it's just a complex version of riding a bike, usually with wires and screws and electricity or power tools, but pretty much like riding a bike.

> “Attending quite strategically, distributing their attention between toy play and viewing so that they were looking at what for them were the most informative parts of the program. This strategy was so effective that the children could gain no more from increased attention.”

I do this regularly. In fact, right now I have an episode of Stargate Atlantis running in the background and I just zone in and out at the good parts as I've seen it before. I believe I just called YC my toy... hmm.
This tension has been rather tough for someone doing a startup on 'finding interesting things to do'. http://www.mobtropolis.com Part of the reason I started it was because I felt like I haven't really done a lot of the things that others have--part of the whole carpe diem sort of thing.

While I have to spend most of my time coding, I take some time off to actually go do the things on the site, to both play test it, and to get my butt out of the computer chair and actually experience things. But sometimes, it's tough because I just want to get more coding done.

In a startup, I think you probably have to err on the side of working longer than normal, but I think it's probably spot on to say that even if you're John Carmack, you can only work for so many hours before losing concentration. It's healthy to stretch your legs a bit.

And besides, seeing more of the world gives perspective and background--something that attributes to developing taste, but we never give it much the credit.
My god, my sarcasm detector just exploded! And I spent years building it.
Ditto. I also acquired a Dell+Ubuntu in 6/07. Switched to a Macbook in 10/07. If you are making decent contract money it just isn't worth the hassle to, for instance, try and get a decent music playing software w/ the appropriate codec support.
I don't get what the website does. Can someone explain it?
"... shut up and do the research before ranting. There's RubyCocoa and PyObjc, both of which will most likely 10x their popularity in a yr after yesterday's announcement. And no one is stopping anyone from making other obj-c bridges. ..."

But note the subtle "mac" wrap required around the code. Most of this is about "control" over the toolchain as much as the UI experience. Control the developers, make them buy macs, improve the bottom line. Where have I heard that line before?
I hope nothing secret in the Pentagon is connected to the internet.
Nope. They will get an e-mail or SMS or gtalk message, and they would reply simply by replying to that e-mail/SMS/gtalk bot. Your friends don't have to sign up. But as the group creator, you need to add your friends' contact information to add them to the group.
WOW. I just grabbed gnutar from a buddy who installed Leopard from CD. His machine had gnutar and mine didn't. Now, macports is happy as a clam. Seems bizzare that I didn't have it. I found one other person who had the same problem with a factory install. Weird.

http://nullstyle.com/2007/10/27/how-to-build-imagemagick-and...
These are by far some of the worst suggestions for saving money in a startup ever.
I'm not worried about him not knowing what a tar file is - fine, he likes Windows, whatever.

What greatly disturbs me is his choice of text editor. Notepad? Seriously?! If you've only programmed with IDEs or Notepad, that is a serious problem. I love vi, and am competent in emacs, but even in a Windows environment he should go for Notepad++ or something...
“I don’t understand computers” is not an excuse
chatterous routes messages between your friends irrespective of whether they are on IM, email or mobile.

It allows people to remain hyper connected.
More bullshit from 37signals. The successful people I know are "on call" 24 hours a day, and actively working only somewhat less.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

Now for the matter of drive. You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office!

What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.''
Computer Science can be taught without a student ever having used a computer; it's a branch of mathematics. Would you expect a mathematician to know what a .tar file is?

Reminds me of a quote from one of the most famous Computer Scientists, who was really a mathematician:

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
- E. W. Dijkstra (1930 - 2002)
I know this is hacker news, and that the programming part of doing a startup is accepted as the most important part of a venture. So this will probably be unpopular.

But I think that you are hitting an interesting point: you could develop hacker news in about a week and I'm sure it is accurate if you say so. But a fully developed site ready for launch is only a small step on the road to fame and riches. A lot of people fail to see this. (not you of course, other people)
The code that runs news.yc is open source, eh?

http://arclanguage.org/install

(see news.arc)
Wouldn't that be Chinese crackers? Not hackers.
"... Nope. They will get an e-mail or SMS or gtalk message, and they would reply simply by replying to that e-mail/SMS/gtalk bot. Your friends don't have to sign up. ..."

Ok, that solves the signup problem.

So you still need to get the contact details. Not as hard as getting friends to sign up. What is the advantage of non group creators (non-admins) signing up then?
Michael Arrington is his own boss, as far as I know, so he chooses to do that. Choosing not to take a vacation rather than being forced not to by a boss is different.

Not taking a vacation, furthermore, is quite a different thing from having a job that is essentially a neverending death march.

Death marches never work, that's the bottom line.
I built a version of it in Rails in a day or two once just for fun. It wasn't quite production-ready, but all the functionality was there.
You get the ability to direct your messages to what you prefer. Say a friend added your e-mail to the group. By signing up, you can route the messages to your gtalk or sms or web instead.
Interesting. To become a competent programmer, a person has to spend a significant amount of time exploring and learning all of the nuances involved.

What other fields of study require this sort of initiative outside of the classroom? Is it enough for a chemist to go to class and complete the homework?

I can't think of any field where curiosity is as important as in computer science and where the classroom is so insufficient.
Correlation does not equal causation.

It seems to me that built to last ignores this fact. I have only read the executive summary, so I might be mistaken.
Why did this get voted down?

It's pretty accurate psychology.
Short answer: No, assuming you meant "should every CS senior know what a .tar file is?".

Long answer: Not always. Large and fascinating branches of CS has nothing to do with computers. A programmer looking to work on UNIX-based file systems should know what a .tar file is.

A commitment to GUI interfaces (and general mouse love) and not knowing .tar files probably just means the person had only seen Windows. I'd say the average child will take a week of dedicated learning before OK at using command line/Linux-based OS's. It would probably be a good idea to have a little intro-course to people who haven't seen Linux (kind of like a summary of OS class in college) at your company to catch these people up.

One of the things that bothers me most about the snobbier computer enthusiasts is how much pride they take in their curiosity, even if what they learn isn't all that impressive - it would take less than a minute to explain .tar file is to a degree more thorough than understood by half of the people who use them.
Um, yeah, if your metric for success is "I've read more articles than the other guy" or "I've published more papers than the other guy", obviously you'll benefit from... reading more articles and publishing more papers.

Personally I don't give a crap that I am 10% as "productive" as John Tukey. I suspect that his productivity made him happy, but that it bought him no more happiness than my own, somewhat lesser productivity buys me. I'm pretty damn sure that all his work didn't bring him much extra money or buy him one extra year of life. I suspect that my friends and relations would rather have 10% more of my time than watch me publish 10% more papers. And I'm with DHH: If I worked with guys like Tukey I would quit rather than be constantly told that I'm some kind of slacker because -- unlike Tukey -- I have more than one interest in life. I know this is true, because I did work in academia with guys like Tukey, and I did quit.

[NOTE: I actually know nothing about the life of the real John Tukey. I'm using the poor guy, as Hamming did, as a notional example of the workaholic. For all I know, Hamming and his boss were wrong, and the actual Tukey had lots of fun hobbies, spent most of his life having fun, and was famous as a genius because he was, in fact, a genius who could do more in three days on the job than most could do in a year. I mean, that plan worked for Feynman.]
> Not sure if this is kosher or not...

I think this kind of thing should be encouraged a lot more. Some kind of geography - matching would help foster a more mature community. hackrtrackr.com tried it, but I think it would work better if it were built into the system. Maybe a link on top called "local" that would somehow connect me to people around my major city (which I specify in the settings)?

^ more details in posts like this are a good idea, also. I think secrecy in startups seems to be overrated, but from the way YC tends to do business, they seem to disagree. I guess they reason it's better to err on the side of secrecy, and I'm probably irrationally biased because of the political associations of the word, but in this case, it seems like a good idea to talk freely.
Wow I tried it and it looks great now! Thanks a lot!
I wonder how many people are really going to take advantage of this. I think it will tend to benefit academic families more than disadvantaged communities.

If you have two parents working and they're earning less than $75,000 per year combined, I kind of wonder how they're going to afford the kind of things an MIT-caliber mind needs, growing up.
Why Software As Service Businesses Are So Interesting
I remember in 4th grade or so, the pledge started to sound a little spooky to me as well.

I think home schooling is an important right because it's the last, best defense against a total fail in the public school system. It also makes it possible for middle and lower class children to have private education rather than having that option end up a further luxury for just the rich.
At the startup I work at, we just let developers come in with their own laptops - I would be very surprised if I am hiring an experienced programmer and they don't already have a super customized laptop that they swear by. It didn't make sense to buy brand new hardware/software for folks who already have a wonderful setup on their machine.

Of course then there was this guy who didn't want to do official work on his personal laptop. We offered to buy him a laptop of his own choice (we specified a max price of course). He got a HP something (doesn't like Mac's) and runs some version of linux on it.

Likewise we have no artificial restrictions on software they use - say editors, jabber chat clients, mail clients etc etc, as long it all works well.

As long as the programmers are hacking away in an env that can run our stack well we have no problems with what they run. Keeps the programmers happy.
While nobody owes us anything when they seek advice, the quality of advice they receive I feel is related directly to the amount of information they provide.
Rumors and Speculation
The pleasure of the teacher's union shows it is not about making sure children are educated, but about keeping and retaining political power.
according to the interesting links on reredd, killnine is defn pretty good.
This is true, in the purest sense of CS. However, how much pure mathematical theory can you fill three and a half years of university education with?

I would imagine that a comp sci department where they never reach a point where the "rubber meets the road" is not worth the trouble.
You have to consider that it is the Pentagon that they are attacking :-)
20 pieces of cardboard for $60? I can buy a CHAIR for $60 and have Staples deliver it.
Caffeine May Prevent Skin Cancer
Can you have a life and work at a startup company?
My favorite people to work with fall into neither category. The most productive, creative people I know are passionate enough about their work to put in tremendous numbers of hours when it matters, or when they're getting good work done -- but they also care enough about the rest of life to take it easy when there's no good reason not to.
Programming is an art. All fields of art that I know of require this kind of outside initiative to be any good.
OK. I actually spent a few minutes trying to parse this post, and I think I get what you're saying. You want to make a spatial, navigable, and extensible model from the linkages in WordNet. Something like a semantics FPS. Either that or it's just gibberish and you're taking us for a ride. Am I close?
So here's the question I have with sites like this: What are the legal implications of people submitting other people's personal contact info to the service without permission?

Are there not privacy laws that come into play here? Not saying Chatterous are up to no good - really, it looks like a terrific service - but you see what I mean.
/downvote for ad hominem, including completely unsupported ad hominem (it says more bullshit but doesn't reference any previous bullshit)
Moral of the story: don't take management advice from /Built to Last/ or from God.
ICANN looks toward end of US agreement
Reminds me of that old Philip Greenspun article on squeezing the last drop of productivity from "your programmers"

http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/managing-softwar...
For what it's worth, I have 15 years of Unix work experience and I don't think I saw any tar file until graduating (my university was a mostly-DOS shop). I learned mostly on the job... man vi was painful... but now I can't use an editor for humans anymore.
To me, it seems like a random number. 75k can be a lot or very little depending where you live.

What if your parents make 76000?
I think that your response -- and the one at 37Signals -- both point to problems with workaholics in an unstructured environment.

An effective manager has, among their skillset, the ability to recognize the workaholics, and recognize the early signs of burn-out. That sort of manager knows how to massage people so that the workaholics can get their fix -- and do so in a way that really helps the company! -- without making other employees feel guilty, and without letting the situation evolve into a burn-out scenario.

Workaholics will also tend to develop the workaholic streak only so long as they perceive that there is that much extra work to be done. If you have a company full of workaholics, and they're all working around the clock for an extended period of time, then you're understaffed or horribly mismanaging your projects.

I'm a workaholic. That doesn't mean that I want to spend all of my time working in the same chair, and if I were to find myself (again...) in the situation where I'm putting that much effort into a company that didn't appreciate it, then I'd leave. However, I think I'm a pretty useful asset if suddenly the company finds itself staring down the cold barrel of a deadline that's gonna require a quick burst of 14 hour days. I've also in the past stayed late to implement new features, or just push things a little bit further ahead.

Now, let's say you don't have any workaholics in your company. What happens if something does require the big push? Now you're forced either to demand overtime, which can generate some pretty serious resentment, or you're forced to figure out some other way out of your problem, which'll probably involve missing the deadline.

I would think of workaholics as the 10,000RPM part of the engine that is your company. You can't run the engine that hard for very long, but when you need that power, there's just no substitute.
uhmmmm as a windows user, tars are all over the place if you look for them, but then, i might have found them as a hacker.
> I would imagine that a comp sci department where they never reach a point where the "rubber meets the road" is not worth the trouble.

...unless your rubber has already met your own personal road long ago. I, personally, learned everything practical I needed to know about programming long before I stepped into a CS class, mostly from self-teaching and the web; I only took CS to "straighten out" my theoretical knowledge. I would have loved a CS department with no computers installed (except perhaps for interactive debugging after it's already clear that you can express yourself in pseudocode.)
It's not like most of us here are at much risk to begin with.
More interesting psychology: when I posted the above comment the grandfather comment was at -2

Now it's rising fast...
I should have been clearer. I'm against forcing people to use any particular OS (I would never take a job for example that required me to code on Windows). If your employees want Macs go ahead and buy some. If they need to use Linux make sure to buy a laptop with supported hardware.