skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can imagine that random picking equals any other strategy, but it seems to me that the index fund thing can not be the ultimate strategy. Just imagine if everybody would only buy index funds, it would not be a normally functioning market anymore.
These plots are begging to be placed on a log-log axis!
The Birth of the Political Long Tail
I suppose you're right about that at Megacorp. Another reason so many of us are starting our own.
No - never missed those, though. The MBA is probably better than my Dell, but that's to be expected with 2 years of technological progress under it's belt.

Although for me personally, my Dell has the ultimate feature: it's fanless. I have raved about that too often on news.yc already, but still...
I don't necessarily agree with his claim that SQL or anything like SQL is unnecessary. While SQL is wordy and oftentimes clunky, it is language-neutral, works predictably across all systems accessing the same database, and doesn't tie the application developer to object-centric (not necessarily OO but leading there) design. It seems like Stonebraker is advocating Ruby here because of the hibernation features native to Rails, which is object-centric as it ties classes defined in the application to database tables. It's a sensible abstraction on top of the loose link between applications and DBs for some applications, but e.g. extract-transform-load applications would be hindered by this abstraction more than helped.

By contrast, I think one thing that DBMSs could make steps towards obviating is explicit optimizations. Instead, there should be support in the language for telling the DBMS what's important when you do your DDL, then let it figure out indexing, reclamation, replication, and batch scheduling. I see this as being a similar optimization to GC -- the runtime performance will initially be in doubt, but it will ultimately enable the creation of complex systems with far less human effort.
Yahoo Can’t Find the Pirate Bay
With this much press about TipJoy. I think they will go through a period of "false success", I would love to hear how many visits came from TechCrunch and other sources vs returning visits.
Yeah, you should have tried sex first to see if it is even worth the effort.
Slightly unrelated, but the word 'nampa' means to pick up women, but also has a second meaning of 'to be shipwrecked'. An infinite wealth of puns are available between the two.
I can only infer from the quote that different people have different notions of "successful relationship".
I'd be hard pressed to envision a DBMS for business WITHOUT ACID. Transaction processing has to be "somewhere", and the DBMS has always seemed like the most appropriate place.

I remember the days when we had to roll our own record locking, transactions, and stored procedures, and don't relish going back.

SQL, OTOH, can hit the road and I'd never miss it. No problem putting it's job into my language du jour.
Ah. The content here is great. I'm not denying that YC is awesome.

It just has a sub-par interface. Compared to other sites, it has a terrible UI. It's not very user friendly, and it could be much more so.
I get that it's not a very detailed article, but it seems sort of bad to omit that it's pointless to attempt to count cards when a continuous shuffle machine is in use.
Maybe this is Massachusetts bias, but I was expecting to see "your company's health plan is a carton of bandages and a bottle of aspirin" as a bad sign.

If you're going to start a company, do it now instead of such time when the cost of health care has redoubled.
Good thing that I relised that before I was in college.
I assume a school as reputable as CMU has already accounted for the "woman named Dave" scenario.
I contest. Sayings will only get you so far.

Would you disagree that plenty of smart developers create and plenty of good developers reuse?
In Web design
here is a thing
to keep in mind
don't make things
hard to find
Burma-Shave
You can use the ECB (emacs code browser, which is what's displayed in the left column of the first image) quite happily without the mouse - I use it quite a lot in a terminal.
Reaching for the Sky Through The Compute Clouds
many, if not most, high-end OLTP systems didn't (and don't) use relational technology anyway. Programmers do what's necessary to get the job done. IOW this is preaching to the choir.
The main reason I avoided Textmate is because its Mac specific - in my day job a Mac is not an option ... If I was going to invest the time in learning more advanced features of an editor, I wanted to be able to use it everywhere!
Good point. Both arguments (mine regarding hosting your own blog, and yours) are quite valid.

I assume this means linking to it on your site. But if your server goes down, your users won't be able to get to it anyways, unless they have your blog address memorized or bookmarked.

Your site should never be allowed to go down for long, unless something major happens, in which case a backup plan is ideal. I would host my own blog, and if my server does go down, redirect the domain to a stable site with a brief explanation of what's going on, and then when every thing's back to normal post about it in the company blog.
Just to clarify, I do find your original statement to be absolutely correct: "Anyone who's good at anything knows that there's an inverse correlation between talking about it and being good at it." The reason you have to explicitly say it, though, is that it goes against the grain of human behavior.

Being the type of person who actually does things without wasting time talking about it, I've had to learn the hard way that that's not what hiring managers look for. I would not trade my satisfaction of good work for money, but I've found that by spending a little more time on marketing skills rather than on programming skills, I can greatly improve my income.
GPP's phrasing seems to be non-mutex such that it explicitly does not say that, e.g. "smart developers do not create"

Maybe a more encompassing way of stating the saw would be "while a good developer can create what is required, a smart developer will use what is provided"
Xtremely Quick Development System
One could split hairs here indefinitely, especially debating the nature of what being useful means and to whom.
Tough Guise -- A documentary on the excesses of hyper-masculinity in society
I would use blogspot and a custom subdomain. As aaroneous said the blog will keep up if your servers go down, and also you will save headaches and time that you can use on growing your product.

The only problem I've with blogger is their template system, I simply don't like it.
We made a blogspot blog in about 10 seconds.
http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/

I'm going to roll my own semi-blog that will be a bit different style.

With comments by disqus, almost any home brewed site can act like a blog.
Ever called by "Financial Services" even though you are on the national Do Not Call registry?
And, do they hang up on you when you ask what company they are with or their phone number?

I'm on the Do No Call registry, yet I've gotten dozens of calls from this scumbag company over the last year.

Today I got another call. I kept the dude on the phone for a good 5 minutes before he asked if "this is about getting my number off their list" (at which point he hung up when I said "yes").

I found this via googling: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/07/dmfs.shtm

What I want to know: does anyone know the actual company name? What can we do to fuck up these scumbags?
The trouble with double blind is that in many disciplines the number of people publishing is quite small, and then when you get into sub disciplines you get a very small number. If you've shopped a paper around at conferences and workshops before submitting it, it can be fairly unlikely that a person qualified to review the manuscript doesn't know who wrote a paper or couldn't find out with a phone call.

So effectively you get single blind (if that, it is often pretty obvious who your referee was if you know the writing style or the referee keeps citing papers by the same author) . However, even though it often doesn't work very well in practice, not doing it doesn't work with perfect certainty.
Iterate as much as you can, and have a sweet feedback/response system created. Then you'll know that what you're making is something they want, because a bunch of people probably requested it. Also it makes your users feel more involved which is especially important in the beginning.
If the number shows up on caller ID try these:

http://800notes.com/

http://www.whocalled.us/

I think you can also get your phone company to block numbers that have caller ID blocked.
Wordpress has become the defacto standard in blogging systems. I can think of only very few scenarios where someone would want something that they couldn't just use Wordpress for.

Not to mention, with the large user base it has, you can get things like plugins and themes to customize your site without doing a lot of work. Plus, the template system is easy enough that writing your own custom theme should be a piece of cake.
Picking Winners: 7 Tips for Choosing the Best Programming Platform
Joe Hewitt may harm your computer
Third-party iPhone apps to come via iTunes?
Harvard Site Hacked and Leaked on BitTorrent
My first startup made that mistake. We built the entire product before getting any customers. Since then, I've always started new projects as pseudo-consulting gigs. That way, the product is designed around a real need.
Alienware Android Cell Phone, First Pictures
I'm concerned that the way we fund and review science has some big problems. I don't want to get into a 30,000 word essay here, but some sciences are starting to sound like echo-chambers where there is a narrative and research is supposed to support that narrative. Double-blind peer reviews should help with that, or at least try to help. But I remain skeptical that anything serious is going to be done until science completes politicizing itself somewhere in the next 2-3 decades.
No offense to the designers, but I'd be embarrassed to carry around something like that. Hopefully they're listening to early feedback!
He's saying "Don't reinvent the wheel."

Use what's available when you can, as it will save you time and money. Make what is not available already.
New BotSniffer better able to detect foul stench of botnets
Bear in mind that established researchers aren't going to take a "superficial No" for an answer, and maybe the reason pubs stay single-blind is that double-blind would invite havoc; Raj Jain would be getting articles turned down, and everything would bog down in appeals.

Oh, wait. No he wouldn't. ACM SIGCOMM is double-blind. Yeah, I have no idea why everything doesn't work that way.
They block caller ID when they call. *69 doesn't work either.
Am i the only person that thinks Guy Kawasaki is too arrogant for his own good? I suppose it comes with being a VC though...
ditto

Great scripting language for game deveopmet - Not sure that I would use it for web development however;
SPL: The World’s Simplest Functional Programming Language
The title of this post is excessively melodramatic.

It isn't necessarily "corrupt" to reject double-blind peer review. In my experience, most scientists who are qualified to review a paper will be able to infer the name of the researcher behind it, based solely on the content.

This is particularly true in areas where software packages or novel algorithms come into play, because people tend to name their ideas for maximum recognition. It's silly to hide the name of the researcher when the paper refers to their pet algorithm a dozen times by name.
I've looked at Lua in the past. I chose not to spend time learning it because it doesn't seem to offer anything. It's basically Python with a smaller footprint and fewer libraries, as far I can tell.

The small footprint seems to be the most touted feature. I'm sure it's useful if you need it, but if not, I don't see the point.
The reason is very simple. Most of the trolls are nerds, and so they never get laid. Because of sexual frustration they decide take it out on someone by trolling. So trolling stems out of nerd sex denial. Sigmund Freud has explained the critical role sex plays in human psychology; even all wars & bloodshed that happens is in one way or the other connected to sex. In the end, its darwinian instinct.
All saying aside, this guy isn't even sure he wants to blog. Unless he's selling blogging software, his time would be better spent working on his product, marketing, etc instead of rolling his own blogging software.

Wordpress is so easy to setup that it's probably taking me longer to write this comment than it would be for him to setup Wordpress.
It's generally really hard to throw away stuff, even if it's bad. Users get used to things in the UI even if it's bad.
Next-gen Intel notebook chips to exceed 3.0GHz
TechStars: 14 Questions

YC: 30 Questions

LaunchBox: 42 Questions
My consciousness is not dependent upon my material. My material completely changes during the course of my life, but the essential "I" stays the same. So, if consciousness emerges, then the "I" has to be particular to the pattern, not the material. Therefore, two instantiations of the same pattern should have the same "I".

To clarify, this "I" is not consciousness in general, but the "I" particular to me.

I don't think this is susceptible to the gradualism line of thought, but we can go there if you want. It'd be helpful for me to clarify my argument, but it is kind of low level.
I offered it because, if I remember correctly, that's about the only advice that would have reached me when I was 18.
It's a comic. You know that, right?
Makes sense. How many of the plugins sites try to install are actually useful?

I wonder if Google will whitelist the page once this comes to their attention.
Ah, then the key to acceptance is to name your company "General" something.

It does bring up a key point, though. The contacts that you make there are going to be generally government affiliated, which is fine if that's the kind of interest you're going for. Personally, even though I left a lot of friends behind around BWI, I have no desire to go back.
Still practicing.
It is possible to make emacs newbie friendly. For instance, theres CUA mode, which uses standard Windows hotkeys. Maybe there should be a newbie emacs which starts out with Windows/Mac emulation variables set.
If you're a pimple faced sweaty male teen these might be pretty cool. Otherwise not.

Don't these people have any sense of style at all ?
I was replying specifically to "There's no way tiny yc can support the huge number of capable people." I'm not saying there are no advantages to having multiple sources of seed funding, just that our inability to scale isn't one of them.
Talking about Girls & Math: How It Works:

Say, roughly, (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers...) "Women are rare in mathematically demanding fields. This is a problem I want to solve, so I'd like to talk about the cause. Maybe it is because they are discriminated against. Maybe it is because women have other priorities than men. Or maybe it's a reflection of what we see in standardized tests -- that there is more variance in male skill." And be told that you said "Girls are bad at math."

I'm glad this is one of those issues so complex it takes a stick-figure comment to say something about it that is both accurate and noncontroversial.
Seth Levine's VC Adventure: Failure
Credit where credit is due... the quote is based on Henry Kissingers' original:

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."

http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1477

As for why trolls exist at all, I think it is because it is so darned easy to be rude and generally small-minded and full of self-puffery when the troll has such near-anonymity and therefore no sense of responsibility. I also think that geek communication tends to be brief, and it is easy to be rude with a few short direct words... in the real world, such behaviour is not tolerated but in forums, the troll can just keep posting, and posting, and posting.

As readers, we also absorb rudeness better, and remember the smallest slights, whereas we skip over the fluffy bunny comments where someone chips in with a happy "me too!" or "hug" and a row of smiley faces.

Andrew.
After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser
I agree, it's definitely not a "business phone", but my guess is that it might be a big hit with the high school LAN party crowd.
"airhadoken 1 hour ago"

"do it now instead of such time when the cost of health care has redoubled."

Oops. Too late.
The stagnation of web design
75% of Local web design companies ignore disabled people
Windows is Noisy, in a good way.
The Programming Style Guide they use at Art & Logic Inc.
the first guy is currently learning rails in order to make a start on his first startup, but appreciates that ultimately he 's gonna be rather disadvantaged trying to code something complex with no experience.

the second guy is not "on the lookout for web design jobs", he wants to find people that are cuz he has too many people asking him if he knows anyone that can do it.

the third guy was joking, i assume. he co-founded the site, after all..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_one%27s_own_dog_food
Something like this could be a self fulfilling prophecy. Then the momentum would just build.
Yeah sad truth is people don't realize that there are in fact disabled people out there who use the internet also.

Fortunately, I write my pages with those things in mind. Hopefully others will take someday start taking a more proactive role in separating model/content from layout/view.
Is it even possible to vote something down? I don't see any down arrows. Maybe I don't have enough karma?
Can someone give me a reason to try emacs and leave my trusty vim?
The Complete List of XAML Tools
Only a fraction of our uniques are from TechCrunch actually. I'm quite pleased with that. More soon.
The thing looks like a monster.. or, I know! An ANDROID! <G>
Andy Kaufman lives
Any comments on the journalling?
Hosted wordpress has worked out for us. Customization is limited-- and no JavaScript widgets of any kind are allowed.
5 Top reasons why “webmasters” are doing Google’s dirty job
The Power of Whimsy
It's probably best to go with index funds until most are going with index funds.
"I think we've all been hearing about index funds for quite a while now." Agreed.

"The most mathematically sound thing to do (if you have 200K or more)" your basic assumption here is a problem.

Index funds allow you (well me, maybe you do have $200K) to invest a small part of your income per month. That is a service, and obviously, I'm willing to pay for it.

"Buy boxes of young, but good, wine." Apparently this is a good idea: http://www.wamllp.com/home.php
Well, thanks it's sort of nice to get all those advice. Just... I'm not exactly a newbie. Like mentioned above I already have worked a decade with VS (and started programming more than 20 years ago). And I'm used to those keybindings very much by now and not only have no problem with them, but I actually do like them. Really. Not the least because nearly identical bindings work in nearly every single modern application on Windows, Linux and even on most Applications on the Web.

The reason I had to leave VS behind is that it's not available for other systems and I also I didn't like VS so much anyway beside it's editor and it's debugger. I can live with smaller changes - so I have for example no problem working with kate and CodeBlocks. But they are still not as powerful as the VS editor had been. Emacs probably is - from all I heard it's even way beyond all of them.

But for all the power it might offer, for a start I would already be glad with simple familiar keymappings :-) I think people who had to work with VS and come from emacs (that stuff happens sometimes) know the feeling and therefore emacs keybindings exist for VS. I'm just looking for something the other way round. Though by now I guess that it's not yet available.

If I like the editor afterwards, well maybe I learn the original keymappings then also someday. But for a start I would just prefer it to work with the keys I like and know.

And I'm not afraid of Lisp - not the least bit ;-)
i had the same reaction (lua resembling python but with a focus on small footprint and a much smaller standard library.)

having "batteries included"/mature web frameworks often trumps the innate benefits of the language, i.e. other people who have spent thousands of hours on mostly boring glue -- ORMs, unicode support, templating engines, caching, getting around browser quirks -- to enable you to focus on your app.

furthermore, you're generally going to be bounded by IO/the database or RAM or some other factor in which case the speed of the language is mostly irrelevant.

it's certainly possible to do web development in any language, but why bother swimming upstream when python/php/ruby do a lot of the hard work for you? it's hard enough just to write your application without having to write the infrastructure beneath it too.
Interview with Daring Fireball's John Gruber
Sarcasm is hard to convey in writing. We used to have smileys to help us but they are going out of fashion. We're gonna have to stop being sarcastic :)
For any kind of adversary system, the opponents will both use quantum computers, so the effects will cancel out. E.g. quickly factoring large numbers means the security industry will use larger numbers.

However, this is a problem for systems that are embedded and hard to replace.
Users will be able to find it, because if your blog is on a different domain, it will probably be somewhere on the first page of google results when you search for your company.

I would just keep the blog somewhere like wordpress because they will have a more fully functional blogging engine. Don't spend your time managing your blog software, spend it making your product better.
Nope. New features win. Users love 'em. Especially when they actually requested them in the first place (we get 10-20 suggestions PER DAY).

The statement, "...they would not appreciate any major changes no matter how clever/creative/useful you think they are" seems to indicate that you might think the best source of ideas is you-- not your users.

IMO, the majority of ideas that you implement should come from your users. If you have a great idea that didn't come from your users (and you have an active/vocal userbase) you should ask your users what they think of it before you implement it.
Theory and Practice
>the essential "I" stays the same

We differ here. I think the I is continually changing and may even be an illusion. If you brought forward the "me" from 1995 to present day, and said only one of us could live, I'd pick my instance. In the same way the Nile is continually changing and made up of different water molecules, the "river " of consciousness is not dependent on individual water molecules, but arises out of a pattern of groups of them. On the same token, it's precise identity is in continual flux (fluid :) and dependent on its location in time and space and the arrangement of it's molecules.
And the best comments are recursive.
I think I could cut my hand on that one.
Why should I forget VMware or any other virtualization product? They also give you 95% of native performance and a full-screen X on top of that.

With 2GB RAM becoming the norm and stand-by mode having replaced power on/off cycles, I have no issues running two systems side-by-side on my laptop at all times.