skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are several things you can learn from a simple, initial version:

-how users actually use your product. The best way to do this is to actually watch them go through your product (either through logging or through usability tests). The things you think are important right not might not be important to the average user.

-where your scalability bottlenecks are. I'm not talking about the obvious ones, I'm talking about ones you can't predict because the real world is hitting you with 100x more traffic than you can simulate.

-better architecture in general. Let's say you have an app that is transferring stuff over the network. You have to manage your buffers, deal with encryption, compression, disk IO, stuff like that. If you are dealing with multiple problems you haven't tackled before, you may not come up with the simplest, easiest to maintain design. But, once you've solved the blocking problems (how do I use these new libraries?), you are better prepared to handle higher level problems (Is there a simpler buffer design that lets me reduce the number of copies I do?)
Amazon SQS Price Drops to $0.01 / 10,000 requests
This article is pretty old, and I've seen it pop up a few times on many of the other social news sites, but that isn't my problem. Something that has always bugged me is some of the ludicrous claims in the article. Take the following:

"It is quicker to type “Amazon” into Google and click on the first result than it is to type www.amazon.com into your address bar."

No chance. In fact, I am pretty confident my (essentially) computer-illiterate father could type "www." and ".com" faster than he could search, wait for the page to load, move the mouse over to the first result, and click it. I see where Altoft is trying to go with it, but his argument is poorly worded. He means the "large number of users" that don't know much about computers--or so I think he does.

I would have liked to see him talk about the integration Google <em>already</em> has with Firefox (type "ebay" into the address bar). I haven't looked into why it happens, but sometimes (like with "ebay") Google defaults to "I'm feeling lucky" results, i.e. it will take you straight to the page, but other times it gives you the search results. "scrable" takes me to a specific webpage, but "scrabble" takes me to the search listings.
Your experiences sound fairly similar to my own. When I incorporated, I was a freshman in high school, and the lawyer I used to file the papers hired me to build a web site for him. He never paid the bill in full. (I paid his, of course.) I've also had my share of negative experiences with business partners who respectively stole money from customers, stole common shares in my company from me, and wanted to steal information from customers. Each time, I thought I'd learned my lesson, to no avail.

In general, from my perspective, if you find yourself disagreeing with (meaning "being more conservative than") most people in business about what constitutes an ethical solution to a problem, you're probably right. Most businesspeople have no morals. It took a while to get used to that.

I have a biased view on Facebook and privacy, but a legitimate one nonetheless, I believe. You can find it here:

http://www.news.com/Will-security-become-Facebooks-Achilles-...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128805

http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/how-to-learn-lisp/

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125766
Lots of good stuff about technology and education, lots of stuff about flying, photography, and dogs too.
I am not a US citizen. Can you briefly explain what this skewed ideology and dogma is? There's a touch of scorn in your own comment. I rather like inflammatory articles provided there's some beef to the point being made. I'll leave that assessment to French or German readers.
New Yahoo tool gathers favorite Web places on mobiles
I posted this a few days ago, but the tesla guys have a pretty good blog. The last post covered the process of testing their traction control software:

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog4/?p=65

I guess some types of debugging are a little bit more exhilarating than others :)
BetterExplained is nice (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Betterexplained)

Dan Weinred of Symbolics/Common Lisp/ITA Software fame has a good blog, although he hasn't written in a while (http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/feed/)

Instigator Blog has some good posts about startups (http://feeds.feedburner.com/InstigatorBlog)

Skrenta has good observations about search engines and entrepreneurship (
http://www.skrenta.com/atom.xml)

Skydeck has good posts about the mobile phone industry, mobile development, and OCaml (http://skydeck.com/blog/feed/)

TheFeelGood has cool music (
http://thefeelgood.com/feed)

Why Does Everything Suck has good observations about the technology of business, New York, PIMs, databases, etc (
http://feeds.feedburner.com/whydoeseverythingsuck)

I've got more obscure ones if anyone's interested.
Similar question I'd been thinking of posting (I'll start a new thread if it doesn't get enough traction here):

How about Boston / Cambridge?

Potential requirements would be: at least two separate rooms, which can be tiny (basically a bed and a desk in each), and it'd be fine if they're in a shared house, plus broadband. Is $1000/month doable for that?
I value my privacy so much that I have no account on any social network and never will. A very few number of people have my cell phone #. Anyone can send me an email anytime they want.

You say, "I deliberately marketed myself aggressively online because I figured that that was the best way to win the game".

What game? I don't see the logic in that at all.

People pay money to solve their own problems. Provide them with a solution. That's the only "game" I've ever been interested in "winning". The rest is smoke and mirrors.

If you have a popular blog or had written a book and positioned yourself as an expert, that would certainly help your marketing effort. Of you could just as easily spend that time advertising, networking, and pounding the pavement the old fashioned way to generate business. At least that way, you preserve your privacy.

Losing your privacy is like scattering feathers in a storm. Gone, never to be put back into the pillow case again. Ask him:

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/11/a_lesson_for_us_all
thats exactly what i thought of
why is everyone complaining about Emacs? I was also stubborn at first and refused to learn Emacs because it was 'strange' and 'difficult'.

I used Eclipse and CUSP, it's alright. It could really help you get started. But I wish I had learned Emacs earlier. The only thing I will continue to use Eclipse for is Java programming (which thankfully I don't do much of these days).
Ruby makes me happy. Its code is succinct and beautiful.
I'm a professional apartment manager in the Silicon Valley area. We currently (Feb 2008) have 2-bed/1-bath apartments renting for $1500/mo and 1-bed/1-bath apartments renting for $1100/mo. Water and power typically runs in the $100/person-month range.
What's the segue into becoming a segway?
I think it's fair to ask why there aren't any silicon valleys in Europe. But you should also ask why there aren't any other silicon valleys in the United States.

A better study would be to take silicon valley out of the picture, and then compare the "best of the rest". How does the start up scene in Copenhagen compare with Seattle? Berlin and Austin? Boston and Oxford?

I have a feeling US based cities would compare favorably, but not as dramatically, and perhaps at a higher social cost.
"Startups need to identify their moat and build their company around it."

Mixing up metaphors. I think you want to be inside the moat.
Personally I learned HTML and CSS from the specifications and some experimentation while doing a project... I don't see why you'd need books to learn those.
Bottled Water Vs. Tap Water
Omnigraffle on OS X. It's software to change platforms for.
The USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US is today
"Most businesspeople have no morals."

Not my experience. You need to meet new businesspeople.

I would say, "Some business people have no morals. They ruin it for the majority that do."
I remember reading about an (pre-AOL+TW) AOL exec boast about those promotional boxes that show-up when people login/logoff AOL. He was saying that if he had a box that said 'Click here to pay $10 for absolutely nothing - that a percentage of their customers would click on it'
I've been really happy using apache2 in front of a mongrel cluster. Apache serves up static files and load balances requests to the mongrels. Can anyone give me a good reason why I should be using something other than apache on a production server?
Steve Wozniak: $100 laptop deserves a Nobel Prize
Hack your finances with Buxfer's API
We have created a special account (apidemo:apidemo) so you can play around with the API. For example, just try:

https://apidemo:apidemo@www.buxfer.com/api/analysis.html?month=feb08

Read more about it at:
http://www.buxfer.com/blog/2008/03/02/introducing-the-buxfer-rest-api/

Let us know what you think!
> Have you ever seen THX 1138?

I have. It's shocking to see Robert Duvall so young. I saw [Edit: not One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but To Kill a Mockingbird -- duh] recently and I couldn't believe he was Bo Bradley.

Anyway... I've found the people on here to be a bright group. Even when I post comments that get downvoted, I understand the reasons. Frankly, losing my karma doesn't bother me too much. As long as you can make your case intelligently, you'll be fine. For example, I made a comment defending spanking (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=127794) which I knew wouldn't be a popular stance. However, my approach was measured and, even though the majority disagreed, the comment itself wasn't viciously downvoted. The internet tends to distort one's sense of humanity. The bulk of the people out there are reasonable, the existence of 4chan notwithstanding.
Wozniak 'disappointed' by Apple iPhone
That's pretty fucking slick guys
Microsoft-Yahoo combo could mean one fewer exit for upstarts
that is doable near boston/cambridge, exclusive of utilities.

if you are willing to live in somerville (parts of which are effectively cambridge due to its shape) or even medford, definitely.

compared to SF/SV, there is proportionally a much larger student population in Boston/Cambridge, so supply/demand/price varies with the academic calendar more than in other places.
"Probably because there’s no free version online and it’s a pricey book. I got it for myself for Christmas and it’s well worth the price. It’s half AI book, half tutorial on Lisp programming and Lisp style. It’s a good read with lots of example programs written in good Lisp Style."

I'm sad he described PAIP this way. To me, PAIP isn't even so much about Lisp or AI as it is about how god damn awesome Peter Norvig is. I think my programming became much better after I studied his style.

Bottom line, PAIP makes you a better programmer even if you never intend to use Lisp for anything.

You should learn enough Lisp to read PAIP, in other words.
In the article, I was writing to myself circa 2006, who didn't know anything about anything when it came to Lisp (the whole environment, not just the language). I put off learning emacs for a long time not because it was strange or difficult but because "who cares?". Once I read some things about how emacs was powerful, that it is a good investment, that it's the best editor period for plaintext (most of this came from Yegge), I decided that Emacs fingers were something valuable that I wanted to have now and 10 years from now, and I was willing to work for them. I wrote my cheatsheet and my SLIME screencast reference to try and lower the perceived cost of learning emacs for other potential users. Hopefully better understanding of its power and lower cost of adoption will help more new devs give Emacs a fair shake.

Because emacs is the more powerful long term option, I will continue to make it my primary recommendation. I'll recommend Cusp/Eclipse to those that just don't care about emacs (now or later)
I will try. I live in the Netherlands. The schools here don't teach us that capitalism is bad. It is true however that they teach us that capitalism does not solve all problems and that capitalism completely without government control can go wrong (e.g. monopolies, Microsoft). They teach us that capitalism is good if everyone gets the same opportunities. So this means that all children should be able to get good education, even if your parents cannot pay for it. It also means that if you are handicapped and you cannot get a job then the government will give you enough money for food and a place to live. They also teach us that communism is good in theory but cannot work in practice (i.e. will lead to totalitarian regimes) (compare with "SCARY! FEAR! ANGST!"). To me this sounds like a balanced view.

I don't know about France (note to the author: Europe is not one country and not eveyone has the same opinions), but similar quotes could be obtained from dutch books:

> Peter says:

> [insert quote here]

> Exercise 5: Do you agree with Peter? Why or why not?
Ask News.YC: Hacker parents and grandparents: What do you do with photos?
I didn't know until the "moms & dads, what do you read?" item was posted and garnered 70 comments that there were so many parents on news.yc.

I'm very interested in what you're doing with your photos. I'm trying to gain as much understanding as I can about parents' and grandparents' relationship to photos of the kids. I want my site to alleviate photo-related pain and bring photo-related excitement. The more I know the better my chances of figuring out how to do that.

I know news.yc is not exactly a random sample, but I'd still like to know: What do you do with your photos now? Under ideal circumstances what would you like to do with them? What are your privacy concerns related to web sites? What else can you tell me?

I welcome thoughts from non-parents too: photos of vacations or activities, photos whose value is at least partly in the story they tell rather than being an entirely artistry.
Useful context: it used to be $0.10 / 1,000 -- so it's now 100x cheaper.
One thing about experience is if you learned something important from it, you can say so, and make it part of the discussion.

I've done the same thing with upmods. :)

But I periodically skim my whole threads page for replies, anyway.
Oh come one guys, you know you were thinking dorkubator too. I guarantee the other kids on campus have figured that one out. I was going to say it myself but I thought it was too obvious!
I bought it for myself because none of my family members understood what the heck I was talking about when I said I wanted Peter Norvig for Christmas! I've never enjoyed reading a textbook so much as PAIP and I try to plug it whenever I get a chance. Do you mind if I quote you on my blog?
Is anyone surprised that Pylons doesn't get enough credit. I prefer it to Django for most projects.
It was available a few days ago, it just wasn't announced on their blog.
It's awsome that they use git, it's slowly starting to replace SVN.
Diablo gets repetitive and pointless real fast...
Want something better than just Django? Check out Pylons!
Ask YC: Resistance to the new.
I noticed a trend on my company, and I wish to know if this is standard all around. I am a unexperienced coder, I have a tad more than an year on software development field as a professional. I noticed that people that are far more experienced than I am are quite resistant to change or to try anything new. Not many months ago I had a discussion with my manager about being allowed to use .NET 3.5 because the company was still using .NET 1.1 due to the fact that "the company" did not have enough time to analyze how .NET 2.0 "worked" and couldn't understand the impact of the change, much less .NET 2.5. I would still be developping in .NET 1.1 wasn't for the WCF that comes as part of .NET 3.5 and would cut a lot of development time because the company decided to make the software using SOA. Is it always like this? Why is it that the ones that could learn quicker due to their greater experience are the ones less willing to learn?
It is currently read-only,. I hope they will extend it to other products as well.
Thanks for the long write-up, I'm thinking of moving out west as well (from South Carolina of all places), and San Jose is on my radar. I'm a 25yo single male used to living very cheaply, so those numbers are helpful. I'd be living out there doing contract work for people in NC, which is probably backwards from the optimal setup...
Rethinking the Resumé - Skill Clouds
Can you be more specific on location?
Software masterpieces: Emacs, TeX, Zork, Scheme, Microsoft mouse driver
I believe I am gifted with a good judge of character. I have only been screwed over by people a few times, and was always expecting it from that person.

I have met 3 successful people in business that are what I would consider honest and straight shooting. I have kept in contact with all 3.

I have met hundreds of unsuccessful people who fall into the 'have morals' category.

The majority of people who I have met who have been very successful are snakes. I have met a few new billionaires, and the tactics that they used even against their employees and friends were very shady. One of them bought out a partner for a very low amount because he knew they were about to sell at a very high valuation shortly.

What I have discovered is most people play the game to win, and rarely play with integrity. I mean this all in a very non-judgmental way (even the snakes part!), people should live their lives by their own moral compass.
Troika Newton Virus (Prank App) for Macbooks
a link to the 2 bedroom?

we are moving out in april/may and we are looking for a 2 bedroom.
The paradox of choice - as a framework! :-)
when i was living in san jose in a... what those artsy-sounding things called... it was about $1000 a month. rent was $700, everything else like utilities added up to about $200. starbucks/jamba juice every day added up to $100 >.<

i lived in the outskirts of SJ i believe. ebay was a couple blocks away. i miss the bay area :(
Living in San Francisco:

$1000 is the starting price for rent on a decent studio and can get as high as you want, depending on the neighborhood.

Food can be cheap enough if you shop at Trader Joe's and eat out at Tommy's Joynt. (Say, $300 a month.) I like to eat out more often and spend $600-$700 on food each month for me and my girlfriend. We don't go out drinking very often, but when we do, it's easily $100 a night for several drinks, pizza, and a cab ride home.

I don't own a car, but when I did it was $150/month for a spot in a garage and $40 for parking tickets. Public transportation is great and the city has a strong bicycle advocacy group, so that's what I choose.

I highly recommend living in the city if you aren't bothered by crowds, and there are plenty of software companies here. (For anyone that is a PHP and JavaScript pro, I can pass on a resume to the hiring manager here at Trulia.)

Let me know if you have any questions!
Top Ten Legal Mistakes Made by Entrepreneurs
Is it a big company? Big companies (especially public companies) prefer predictable costs to lower but unexpected costs. They've probably gotten good at estimating work, schedules, hiring, etc using .Net 1.1, so they get the predictability they want. Something that's theoretically better is an ugly question mark for them. Something that's undeniably better (like WCF in your case) has a chance.
Absolutely! Not only that, but it lends itself to the kind of memetic repetition that can make websites really popular (e.g., "Digg this", "Reddit this", etc.).
Right now I keep them on the hard drive because I'm not quite comfortable with pictures of my family and children being on the internet. I know it's irrational because 1) who cares about one kid? and 2) most sites have an option to make pics private. I'm just a little nervous about not being able to put the genie back in the bottle. Unexpected consequences are unexpected.

I email some pics and snail mail CD-ROMs to interested family. If I did use a photo-sharing site, I'd probably use yours because of the email updates instead of having to login to see pics.
I suspect its because Pylons has only relatively recently reached a stage where the code and documentation makes it simple enough to dive in and do great things without too much hassle.

I think Pylons has broader and deeper goals, so there has been a period of ramping up and getting the foundations in place, while the efforts put into Django's development have been focused on making specific things easy. Now Pylons is settling down and maturing, it will probably start to become much more widely used and appreciated. Also, Pylons may benefit from Django's recent boost in a similar way the link suggests Django is benefiting from Rails.
I've been quietly rooting for Jaanix for a while, ever since the creator first posted a link to it on Reddit. You guys have been constantly tweaking and tuning the site, and listening to suggestions, and it's looking great now.

That said, the infinite scroll thing drives me a little nutty. Since I'm usually stealing time away from something to screw around on a news site somewhere online, I try to say to myself, "I'll just read 2 pages", or "I'll just scan the first page, I only have a couple of minutes". But, I can't do that on Jaanix. On the other hand, I think it's a cool feature, and I get why you want to use it.

Is there an on/off switch for it in user settings maybe? (I'm not currently a registered Jaanix user.)
Reminds me of this old joke:

- Mr. President! The Russians have landed on the moon, and they are busy painting it red!

- No problem. When they are done, we will just write "Drink Coca-Cola" in big white letters.
If your are not using EC2, is the same price?