skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
good read.

It's interesting - the author wasn't pressured by external forces (VCs) to grow big - he wanted to grow big as fast as possible. He didn't grow because of demand but because of his dreams, which is the number 1 reason why he failed. It's strange, too, because he wasn't competing to capture market space; nor was he under any sort of deadline to sell the company at a certain valuation.

If the author had just kept on making veggie tales like he had been doing before he wanted to grow big, the company would have been fine. Veggie tales was a solid product that had everything going for it.
I can speak for Berkeley, and you won't have any trouble with taking a class where you have to learn "syntax." I enjoyed the operating systems class there (project work in C++). I don't know if they are still using it, but the first CS class there used to be taught in Scheme using SICP.
I had something similar to this happen to me in my 2nd semester programming class at Berkeley. I was in the lab for a class that was taught in Java for data structures (and C when the memory management talk started). We were 5 weeks into a 10 week class. The guy programming to my left turned to me and asked me what "double equals" (as in ==) meant. I was stunned, but then answered. Later it struck me: how the hell did this guy get through the metacircular evaluator in the first semester? How had he gotten through the previous 5 weeks of assignments? I think about it even now and wonder.
A quick search on http://arxiv.org for 'spacecraft anomaly' shows ~50 papers - mostly about the Pioneer anomaly. Some do suggest dark matter as the cause.
Combine this with the recent article on how terribly wrong math is taught in school and we have quite a grim outlook of our nation's future.
Funny, I find the people who are expert at copy and paste tend to generate the more painful code.
Oooh! A popup, under Firefox, no less. How retro.
pchristensen, yes, i'm the co-founder.
I've given the link as shown by my google alerts for blogupp.com
I'll consider your recommendation for future. Thanks.
Or, don't use God as an excuse to take the risky path every time.
www.novacaster.com is a CMS I coded from scratch in Perl, in 1999-2000. I was told by my boss it would be released as open source, but that never happened. When I left the job, he told me he would be "retaining full rights to the Novacaster CMS code", etc, and there was basically nothing I could do about it. I'd recommend getting a lawyer involved, although even that means nothing if you don't have the funds to fight a court case.

More recently, my strategy has been to say nothing to employers about side projects. Assign the rights to your friends, if you have to, just in case they do find out.
In search of the perfect battery
Why not start off with how to use Blueprint CSS (http://code.google.com/p/blueprintcss/) and then show how to extend it? Blueprint gets the basics very right indeed, and allows your readers to become productive quickly. Then you can move on to how to create your own page elements, how to modify Blueprint, etc.

WRT your question, when I was building my own tiny websites I couldn't understand how CSS would help me be productive. The larger the sites, of course, the more obvious that became.
What would be the point in attending his lectures? Sad to say, but if you research his history as UK PM, it is clear you can't believe a word he says.
Also a program manager: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/sof/598719856.html
I think what it comes down to is focus. I work as hard as I can on the project at hand and (usually) know when it's time to take a break, but the focus remains on the project, not the break. If I cared more about snowboarding, for example, than my startup, I'd be a lot better at snowboarding but I can guarantee the company wouldn't exist.

In my mind startups are all about short bursts of intense and admittedly unsustainable bursts of energy. That's why it's a startup with an end goal in sight, not an established company that intends to continue forever. It may make sense for 37signals to fire the workaholics, but I don't think it does for me.
"Getting by under windows" doesn't really scream 'great coder' to me.
There's all kind of stuff in TOU's that the lawyers insist on. I think Apple are actually concerned that people will run telephony apps across the mobile network. So the threat isn't in the language/environment per se, it's the apps they might support. Presumably a delinquent app can be identified by its traffic and the iPhone disabled whatever language is used.
I think there are enough subjects in computer science to fill three and a half years with theory, no problem at all.

In my CS classes they had exercises, but students where left on their own with the details of programming. OK, there might have been dedicated courses on "how to solve the exercises", but still.

My first day in the computer lab I was completely lost, because I had gotten into Computers with Commodore C64 and then later DOS+Windows 3.1, and I had no idea how UNIX works. Other times, though - WWW was in it's earliest infancy, today it is certainly easier to get information on UNIX.
To be honest, I still don't completely see the point of tar - isn't it redundant, since zip puts things into an archive anyway? Coming from windows, I never used tar, I just zipped everything. Any now that I am on Linux, I never had the need to tar anything. Untaring thankfully is provided by the Gnome File Explorer.

Using Notepad for programming, however, is really odd...
On the use of code in Weblog titles
"How to replace the editor with a computer" - algorithms for news sites
At 21, I was pretty passionate about programming, but I had never dealt with a tar files. I was sticking with Windows because it just worked for me, and the barrier to installing a Linux on my PC seemed so huge (and they were. The first time I installed, it broke my FAT). It was just not worth it. Python works great on Windows, as does Corman Lisp.

I'm passionnate about programming, but computers and OSes are just a pain getting in my way.
You can do GoogleTalk on iChat as a Jabber account.
<quote>
hacking: 0 < version <= 1.0
engineering: version > 1.0
</quote>
nicely put! in the early stages it helps to "hack" at the early versions,people with inter-disciplinary skillsets.

i also think,guess its easier "to manage" engineers. that said - i think its easier for a hacker to manage /steer a bunch of engineers, than for an engineer to lead a bunch of hackers.

at the end of the day, i think a hacker something creates out of nothing. an engineer thereafter tries to keep it afloat without screwing around.
Calacanis Has ‘Em in a Tizzy Again
archlinux+wmii+aterm+vim+rails+unfuddle+svn...
Let me see if I get this: you want a database filled with words, and the words linked to a graphics rendering engine, so that if someone wrote, "The mighty oak between the streams that cuts through the green field" ... hypothetically you would be able to translate that into actually seeing an image of what the sentence describes?

So, you want to invent a new programming environment based on common language structure to ... make video games / virtual reality based on text descriptions?
Managers with different personalities might disagree on whether or not to hire workaholics??
Essay on online dating (solve online dating and you'll get into YC, I promise)
I think it totally depends on the kind of work you're doing. If you're doing a creative, intellectually demanding job, then working for too long will burn you out to the extent that the each extra hour you spend working has a negative impact on your total productivity. More routine mechanical tasks don't degrade in the same way.
There are thousands of java me based games. The market is actually quite thriving (at least here in Europe), as kids seem to like having games on their phones. So, having java Me on iphone would enable selling all those games to iphone owners :-)
Sounds like a JVM will indeed break the terms, including the one about not allowing scripting languages or ways to dynamically run loaded code. JRuby and Jython would be big no-nos. As soon as you loaded either one (or any one of the other dozens of JVM language interpreters/compilers), the app could connect to the Net and download new code. Apple does not want to allow that.
here's one example that drove me up the wall:

== swapping ctrl/caps lock ==

* on osx *

http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~jfieber/osx/ -- i believe i ended up using ucontrol.

* on ubuntu *

go to System/Settings/Keyboard Preferences
(xmodmap is still there if you're so inclined)

also, off the top of my head, it was a pain to:

1. add widgets to the menubar (on ubuntu i just add it)

2. rsync backups to an openbsd server because of the hfs+ tags

3. changing the buttons in Mail.app -- they were horrible

4. shutting down spotlight (can't even remember that one)

5. verbose booting

6. and my personal favorite: getting a cd out of the player when the power is off.

There are answers, I'm sure, to all these questions but you have to figure it out.

-utx
Try (if my understanding of what you're trying to do is correct): "I'd like to link a database full of terms with well-defined meanings to a graphics rendering engine so when I type "The dog runs in the green field" I get an instant green field with a dog running through it."
At my university, we used Unix for everything. We never had any lectures about how to use make, tar, cvs or LaTeX. But we were required to use them, so we had to learn stuff ourselves. I think that is the best way to learn, since it made us more independent.
One of the more interesting pieces of this story is how different Vischer has dealt with failure than a more typical startup founder. It seems like failure is usually quite acceptable, if not even applauded, but Vischer seems to feel a significant personal failure. His apology paragraph on the last page is especially telling, and I would guess quite rare in the realm of "startups."
Or go to the Keyboard system prefs and click on Modifier Keys.
"For the average editor, that analogy might seem abstruse. But what it means in practice is that if you run a website, you would be wise to learn more about exactly how interest in your stories cools off, if you want to display those stories in a way that will entice the largest number of people to read them. You digg?"

Isn't this exactly what the folks at digg have dug? And haven't the redditors made alternative, but related, decisions?

That's not to criticize the story, but can't a writer at the Economist get someone from any of the companies on the phone to discuss exactly these strategies? Seems like a weird place to end things.
Facebook has already solved online dating. My housemates and I got bored last week so we decided that we would each ask out a girl to lunch on Facebook. We had a 100% success rate. Facebook works because it leverages the power of networks and the strength of weak ties. With match.com and plentyoffish there is no identy, no reputation-- that is, no shadow of the future. Facebook has effectively solved this.
Or a compliment.

Which sounds more positive: "pretty-boy" or "ugly-boy" ? :)
I am the king of the jungle, yes, and I have taken you all for a joyride.

You can reach me at tefflox -at gmail.com.
Oh man, this could be a big issue for Apple. Unless they had access to your source, how could they even know that your application utilizes dynamically loaded code/scripting?

Your application could be: Python -> Jython -> JVM -> compiled iPhone native and Apple cant tell the difference (or could they?).

Also, since everything runs in the same sandbox, Apple would technically not be able to stop people using the JVM with their applications. The JVM itself is not its own application, its just used to translate java byte code to native iPhone code for your application. Again this raises potential issues on how Apple could police that.
To tell you the truth, had I been "talking straight" in the Cartesian manner you imply, I would have had to face much stronger opposition than these other besotted remarks. However, I hear your interest, and there is no question that I want to play ball. tefflox -at gmail.com
Why is 37signals so arrogant?
Hi, I'm Jesse.. tefflox -at gmail.com. Will you send a url for a personal project of his? thanks..
Lack of jobs is driving IT pros to malware
Why Do Time Travel Suicides Get Botched?
Revenge Of The Experts: Is User-Generated Content Out?
i mean, exchange the behaviour of the caps lock key with that of the control key.

ucontrol, and fkeys let you do that. both seem to be unmaitained though.
"If tomorrow nothing changed (let's say!) except that macs had 80% market share, would mac fans be just as fanatic?"

There is (possibly) a genuine reason for that. Macs have a culture which tends to be shared by people who use them. You can speculate about what that is (smug? aesthetic? gullible? quality conscious?) but it's a bit like owning a classic car: you feel a connection, however spurious, to other classic car owners.

If Macs go mainstream, it will be like Eternal September all over again. A lot of current Mac users would give up on them because they lost the snob value, but plenty others would find something else because Macs would start catering to the mass, rather than the niche it has at the moment.

(PS, I'm a Mac user, but I hope snobbery isn't what informed my decision. I was more interested in a Unix-based environment and a high resale value.)
What kind of music do you like?
Don't Take Management Advice from god. I am writing that one down and putting it on my bulletin board. :)
Let me tell you, I am expert in deflecting routine semantic parsing. Me, I parse on the level of one's reflexive vowels. I hate to wear the mask of brinksmanship, but yes, you catch the drift. The problem I face, as stated, and more to the point, I use my best strength which goes unrecognized by most, which really gives me the advantage. Of course, I am an old man of 30. Yes, you get the point, that the ideation is true, rather than false. What else is there, dealing with ideas? What can you expect from an idea, but to be taken for a ride? I think it's the definition of interest. For privilege, look elsewhere.
You must have missed the "3 minute wrapup" at the end. They do light preaching throughout, then hammer you with the "Things you should have learned about god and the "right way" " at the end of each show.

I agree with the original post. It's christian propoganda. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it never belonged in the mainstream. THAT is why sales of videos never went above 7 million per year. There is no market for a "christian god" with a lot of people. That is the thing he never mentions. His market was limited from the start, and he STILL doesn't see that...
Wow!
I studied at one of South India's finest Engineering Colleges [College Of Engineering,Trivandrum( Not even remotely comparable to MIT in facilities)].
My tuition fee was less than 50 $ a year !
[Accommodation :- 50 cents a month!!
Food from College: approx $20]
Entry to the college is 100% based on merit.

[FYI,here in Kerala a decent beef steak costs $7 , 320 gram pack of Top Ramen Noodles cost $1.1 and a litre of petrol @ $1.24 ]
If you want to know a person's flaws, learn what they most despise.
Aerobics & Cardio Information
Well, I haven't exactly read the Stumbling on Happiness book -- and that really is something that I regret -- but one of the points that the author made in his TED talk is that the ability to "look back and feel content" depends very, very much on your personality and very, very little on your biography.

I can't quite manage to look back on middle school with happiness, because I consciously remember that it was a profoundly unhappy time in my life. But I can remember the happy bits (many of which centered on the blessed Commodore PET and Apple IIe) much better than the sad bits.

My time at ArsDigita was absolutely the most stressful time of my entire life -- it was completely confusing, I worked 80 hours a week, I didn't really know who my manager was, the VCs smiled a lot but seemed to be speaking an alien language, my project was a weapon which various turf warriors would occasionally use to bash other turf warriors over the head -- but I now look back on it with... happiness! It was trial by fire! I learned a lot of valuable stuff about dysfunctional companies! I met lots of smart but overworked hackers who used Lisp and emacs and Kinesis keyboards, and remembered them as models to emulate! I learned that Boston was a great place to live! (How, I'm not sure. I certainly didn't feel that way when I left town the first time... I needed to decompress from that experience for several years before my sanity returned.)

From this we can conclude that I am basically an optimist. My late grandmother was not. She had Alzheimer's, and as she lost her memories she became a gloomy, paranoid person who was constantly unhappy. I am hopeful that I will take after my late grandfather, who also had Alzheimer's, and who was a cheerful and sunny person right up to the last hour of his life.

Anyway, let's climb out of this rathole and ask: What's my point? Tukey was happy doing work in the moment. I seriously doubt that Tukey gave a damn about whether or not he would "look back and feel content" in his old age. He worked like a dog because he loved reading and writing statistics papers. And, hey, god bless him. We're all grateful that he got so much joy out of something that is do darned useful for the rest of us. But expecting yourself to be addicted to that kind of work -- let alone expecting your coworkers to be addicted to work -- is a recipe for unhappiness and disaster.
You're right, you can learn compsci theory without encountering a .tar file just like you can learn all about astronomy without encountering a telescope. But would you expect someone with a university degree in astronomy to have never heard of a telescope before?
In my program, we had classes (6.033 http://web.mit.edu/6.033/www/, I'm looking at you) with tasks that practically required you to use *NIX systems, know how to open LaTeX'd Postscript files, install open source libraries from tar files, etc. before you graduated. It's not that those things were explicitly the point of the assignments; it's that those things were simply part of the requisite yak shaving for successfully completing the real tasks.
The disdain for customers shown by Hansson of 37signals is an arrogance bound to fail. As long as 37signals is a hobby, where programmers code for themselves, it may very well succeed as a small enterprise with its current size of 10 employees. I'm happy for them, and for the numerous small developers and small companies that find their products useful. But their attitude is a symbol: a symbol of eventual failure. Too bad. A little less arrogance and a lot more empathy would turn these brilliant programmers into a brilliant company, a brilliant success.

Don Norman with the zinger!
Where is this textbook you speak of? I'd love to gloss the index. Are you talking to me, or some professor of yours? Sounds like he's open to a leveraged buyout. Think again, son.
If my Dell battery lasted more than 2 hours then I'd be at a higher risk. The other problem is that I live in England, I've seen it rain with a clear sky before. In a couple of years when I'm free from English weather, then I'll start buying caffinated soap.
Provisional patents are $150. They give you a year to file a utility patent (the expensive one) but neither should set you back $10k unless you really like your IP lawyers.

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2006/12/how-to-stamp-patent-pen...
Calacanis: Working at Mahalo is Like Prison Except We Gots Better Coffee
Not a definitive list but if you were interested in mesothelioma (and who isn't?) you might get $50 clicks on adsense:

http://www.cwire.org/highest-paying-search-terms/

That article is not exhaustive, is disputed as inaccurate, should be used as just an indicator, because as dkokelley said, it depends.
Well, if what you want out of a computer is simply and exclusively tool, then some proprietary system might well be better, although Ubuntu is getting close.

If, on the other hand, you relish the ability to open things up and hack on them if needs be (whence "Hacker News"), then the extra effort 'fighting' with Linux is often time well spent. It's a good feeling to know a system from the ground up, or (as is the case for most of us), at least be able to figure out bits and pieces from time to time.
The backlash has begun.
So far as I can tell, the fellows at 37signals have a highly enviable setup, and they seem happy to be arrogant. For those 10 programmers, what would constitute greater success?

They only work 3 days per week? Rails becomes more popular? They become the media darlings of Mars and Venus?
Interesting... I have never found any of their (37signals) products useful either.
Yes, they are arrogant -- and proud of it: "Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult," Hansson said. "But when I actually looked it up — having an aggravated sense of one's own importance or abilities' — I thought, sure."

He looked "arrogant" up in the dictionary? I mean, he said something like, "What duh heck is dat dey keep calling me...arrogamunt...arogint", and then reached for his well-worn copy of Webster's Dictionary of Words I Should Already Know as a Functioning Adult...

(???)

This helps explain the calorie-free content of his blog.
I like how he writes that they "deserve to fail" . . . hmmmm . . . as if Mr. Norman's sensitivities were the measure by which software companies succeed or fail . . . laughable, absolutely laughable.

As if ROR were not "a brilliant success."
UNdata: A World of Information
Mostly indie rock. :)
Using Amazon's SimpleDB from Python/Twisted
Yea, I agree on the feature you just mentioned. I think it would be really helpful. I mean, there is a jobs tab, but that's only for previous YC companies.

Anyways, it wasn't so much that I was trying to be secretive, but like I said, I am willing to change the idea and didn't want to scare anyone off by mentioning anything in particular and I think that seems to have worked out nicely cause I have been talking to someone for a little and we are changing around the idea already, to something we both think is better. So that was where I was coming from.
Hey Tefflox, its called real life experience. I'm a current winter YC founder, so i have some idea of what i'm talking about.
Windows has excellent development tools.
The Keyboard prefpane trivially lets you map the Caps Lock key to Control. I used that setup for a long time. Are you actually asking to keep Caps Lock around but map it to Control? I guess that really is tricky, but it never occurred to me as useful, because I never use Caps Lock, so I just happily have two Control keys.
Craig Venter: How to boot up a chromosome (video)
How many girls did you ask out to lunch?
The Git Bundle for Textmate
unless you just want to _quickly_ package some files, use tar, skip the compression.
Sony's relentless SLR tinkering brings a big twist
Hmmm.... As soon as I can launch my mesothelioma social network for people who have recieved DUI's, I'm golden!
Is steve jobs not arrogant? It is a fine line between arrogance and confidence in one-self. I do not know where 37signals stands on that line, but their products are very much like Apple's - simple, elegant and not for everyone.
If I recall correctly, the "I'm not developing software for other people" quote is in regard to Rails, not the 37signals line of services.

Besides that, 37signals continues to grow and be successful, and apparently something like 92% of their users are really happy with them. So, arrogant or not, they must be providing something those users want, which by Norman's own standards is "essential for business success".

As much as I like Don Norman and dislike the tone and style of writing at 37s, this seems more like a reaction to being criticized than a well-thought article. It looks like he was reaching for any reason to be able to foretell their doomed future, even if that meant taking statements out of context and ignoring salient facts.