skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Asimov's two big universes, found in the Robots series and the Foundation series, (which turned out to be the same when he revisited them in the 70's and 80's) are simply wonderful. By far my favorite sci-fi, and among the most enduring works in the genre. I read them both every two or three years, and sometimes grab one off the shelf when I just want something to read. The early Foundation is sort of a future history version of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (I seem to recall that was intentional, actually). Asimov's autobiographies and the posthumous book of his correspondence are all fantastic and insightful. I learned a lot from them, and my admiration for the man increased even more upon reading them.

Dune is also astoundingly good, though after the first three, the quality goes downhill (slowly, but surely). Definitely lots to think about.

Rendezvous with Rama left me breathless...and I could not put it down until I'd read the last page. I've returned to it a couple of times, and loved it every single time. The later Rama books are deeply flawed, and should have never happened (they were not written by Clarke, and it shows), as they make Rama seem...hmmm, I can't really think of the right word that expresses it. Cheap, dinky, small, something bad. But Rendezvous is a must read for everyone.

Douglas Adams, of course. The whole Hitchhikers' series is a must, while the Dirk Gently stuff is also funny, but not sci-fi and not mandatory.

I mentioned in another thread my love of dystopias, and one of the best ever is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. She's one of the best sci-fi writers alive (she doesn't exclusively write sci-fi, however). Oryx and Crake is also fascinating.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I enjoy all of Vonnegut's work, but Cat's Cradle is a magical perfect novel.

I don't know if everyone would agree that it's sci-fi, but Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth was an eye opener for me when I was a kid (I went on a Mark Twain kick when I was in elementary school...no one ever told me that all of his books weren't kids books, so I read everything I could get my hands on after being hooked by Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn). Turns out Mark Twain was seditious, heretical, and quite the troublemaker all around.
Google sees surge in Web use on mobile phones
It becomes locked to 4chan, where practically nothing is normal ...
A Framework for Automatic Web Application Generation in Common Lisp
Nice and moody. The problem with gameplay seems to be: You have to move your circle around my drawing boxes half-way on top of it, thus launching it. Not too clever.
This is what drove the Common Lisp Directory site, of "finally crashed after 823 days" fame (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/901a31c82d...).
Well there is one OSS app that I'd really like to see:

- A successor to (no longer maintained) centericq
... getting decimated by its competitors, in a consolidating industry space, with a mostly worthless legacy product line ...
Disks have become tapes
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned most of Vonnegut's work, although it doesn't all count as sci-fi, it's inspiring in a very unique way (and worth reading a couple of times over).
If VC's know so well what will work then why don't they just start the companies themselves?

"Social networks", what a meaningless buzzword. VCs: Please, no more buzzwords.
Google Mobile Learns the Need For Speed, But Is Still Not Fast Enough
But good writers are far more likely to do these things than bad writers are. Among what Greenspun calls the "average-quality programmers", I can't think of many who could care less about reading good prose (they read MSDN at best), or about rewriting anything at all (even their code).
It's a perfect time to celebrate his life, by reading (or re-reading) "Childhood's End", "2001", and "Rendezvous with Rama". All wonderful books that will enlighten and inspire.
I think his point is that advertising is extremely sensitive to the business cycle, as industries go.
if you need to save some time it lets you drive through the park.. McClane ;)
I have an entry about a startup I co-founded that failed on my resume. I also explicitly put in the description: "I learned a lot...from the business' failure."

I've been doing a lot of interviews lately, and most people are impressed that 1) I tried to start a company at all and 2) that I'm willing to admit that it failed

I would definitely keep it on there, as long as it was a good learning experience for you.
At my last employer, there was one former founder that I ended up giving a "No hire" recommendation to my boss on. During the interview, it came out that his idea of founding a company was that he had this wildly ambitious, game-changing idea, and then he outsourced it to a bunch of Russian programmers to write, using his parents' money. And then he blamed them for not delivering when I asked him what he'd learned from the experience.

Let's think of the red flags there: 1) Doesn't have a clear conception of what he's capable of. 2) Unwilling to get hands dirty and code. 3) Because of this, didn't learn any technical skills that'll be useful in the job. 4) Won't take responsibility for his own failures.

In almost any other situation I can think of, doing your own startup would put you way ahead of the pack. I was actually pretty excited about the above candidate when I saw "founder" on his resume, 'till he blew it in the interview.
It looks like a crayon version of working model 2d from a decade ago.
This is a nasty site, I spend 15 minutes to answer and then they want me to signup to see the results.

Why would I be spammed for a stupid test ?
This kind of marketing BS should erased from the internet.

If they want money and have no respect, they can do porn, it's more lucrative and doesn't mislead anybody.
There's also a version for the jail broken iPhone. There's a nice level where the objects on the screen will slip and slide around as you twist and turn the iPhone.
My favourite part is that they're railing against Web 2.0, yet every single one of them is deep into Web 2.0 investments.
Just as a data point: I use and love Tourb.us, it's gotten me to several indie shows I would have missed, it syncs with my iTunes playlist and provides an RSS feed, and has a truly excellent domain name. With your VC money, I recommend that you buy them.
Matt,

Good post. Having both done a startup that didn't go big and now one that looks like it will turn into something big I thing your points are very well made.

As you say, history is written by the winners and about the outliers and totally glosses over the truth for the average majority (and the destructive lows of the minority).

As all of us know who've done it though, doing a business is something that's just in your blood. Most of us who do it didn't do it because we chose to, only because we had to.

I once asked Marc Hedlund a little about the failure of the startup he did before Wesabe. He said it was bad but on balance he didn't feel he came out too badly since he didn't lose his wife or go bankrupt. Enough said.

The highs are insanely high but it's worth writing about the lows too because there's a whole lot of cult around the startup scene that lures people into decisions that can be destructive.
multiple file upload would be great! I vote for that.
I loved it personally. Inspired actually. Submit more links like this.
2001: A Space Odyssey - What hacker read that and then didn't want to create HAL?

HHGTTG: Insipired me to keep the relative unimportance of most things in perspective
RTM = ?
"Hiring is obsolete" is the one.

I remember because I translated it a while ago to Portuguese.

http://lullis.infogami.com/pg/hiring
Great work Brett. Very polished for getting started. You need to figure out how you can beat Reddit's new "build your own reddit" system. Maybe focusing on certain niches like families that like to share links (mine!), pet lovers, sports fans, etc. I think you could make fast inroads by figuring out how you can target folks like that rather than going after reddit.com head on.
The First, The Free, and the Good
This game looks simple on the surface, but it must have some interesting physics code inside.

This reminds me of a tool that was developed by ParaGraph back in 90s (the same company that developed handwriting recognition for Apple's Newton). Their app allowed creating TrueType characters by drawing a simple raster image. This is stunningly impressive if you consider that TrueType is essentially defined by geometric splines. Converting raster image into a set of curves is an extremely unobvious thing to do, but on the surface the whole thing looked quite ordinary and trivial.

Same thing with Crayon Physics - trivial on the surface, but complex on the inside. And this is what's impressive about it.
Superlanguages: A Revolutionary Approach to Development
Challenge: which Javascript library is the best
They have money...wonder if they have a clue.
Seems like some marketing department wrote this.

"A superlanguage provides a number of technical features that are specifically designed to close the gap between the concepts in the application domain and the technologies that are used to implement the application. Superlanguages can be used to empower development teams by increasing the sophistication of the tools they use to implement the application."

It doesn't say anything!
Hey, I'm up in Toronto working on my startup and looking to launch in a week or two. I wanted to head down to San Jose to work on the launch, so the timing would be great for me. Look for my email.
It looks like at least 90mph driving on the highway...
Online social networks: not good business
The Internet Archive Keeps Book-Scanning Free
I won't say it's "as good as big co experience" (pg), but it is valuable. A lot of how someone interprets your year depends on who's looking at your resume (they're not obsolete, no matter what anyone says). If on one hand you're applying to JP Morgan, there's a chance a hiring manager might not like the fact that your history isn't driven by credentialed companies. On the other, if you're applying to a Valley firm--another startup or someone like Google or Yahoo, they're likely to think your experience was valuable and showed initiative and guts.
I came across it via a podcast from Stanford on entrepreneurial thought leaders. I guess it hit home because I've thought a lot lately about the entropy the big corporations are doomed to when their primary goal becomes share holder value. I think that this is a great idea and hope that it give an alternative to standard corporate values. Would google have been a B-Corp if it existed?
Y Combinator Demo Day - which one will be The Next Big Thing?
Nails Never Fails (Lenny Dyktra is a Massively Successful Entrepeneur)
Working in a cave

He was an introvert in a workspace full of extroverts. Working to short time lines in a code monkey shop reporting to various non-technical managers.

The lifespan of a tech skill

The tools are chosen for him.

The golden rule of documenting software design

The products are designed by committee on paper and changed at regular intervals. Everyone had a good, different idea of what constituted the final product.
http://EtaLambdaChi.org
Nice.

It would be sweet to have the satellite view ...
Hey Chipheads, Here Are Some Startup Ideas
But will probably cost a few thousand dollars less.
http://workingmodel.design-simulation.com/WM2D/index.php
Twitter breaks down barriers in the classroom
What is a Web 2.0 Startup? Does this mean more money is going into Web 2.5 or 3.0 Startups?
Some startup inspiration: Homes of the world’s billionaires
If you're going to mention John Brunner, you can't forget The Shockwave Rider. I found it very prescient when I read it in the '90s. If William Gibson is the father of cyberpunk, I think that makes Brunner the grandfather.
I submitted it a while back, but it didn't get as good reception.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=122548

I think adjectives are necessary in the title to convey how cool it is, maybe.
What if it's a social network that people use a lot? Will it be ok then?
I'm not a statistician, but if I read the paper correctly ... there is barely a negative correlation in his 2006 study (if you remove the one significant anamoly). n=18 in his 2002 study and n=16 in 2006. He controlled for age and years of active publishing which may be correlated to consumption. In fact, he conveniently removed the 1st principal component in the 2002 study and not in the 2006 and covered it by an offhand remark of "almost quantitatively identical". If they were almost quantitatively identical why did he remove it from one study and not the other. Oh! Well, earlier in the paper he mentions that the results were only consistant between the two studies when he controlled for age. The median consumption of the 6 bohemians in his 2002 study is 200 litres/per year(!!!) and the remaining 12 Moravians drink 37.5 litres/per year (which is quite the bimodal distribution). The 2006 study were the same people as in 2002 "where available". So n=16 for the entire study. They are all researchers in "avian evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology" in the country with the highest per capita beer consumption rate in the world. Hardly a meaningful dataset in my eyes. Then again, maybe I'm biased in my analysis. Beer drinkers unite!
And on train tracks, too.

Makes speeding down the Henry Hudson much faster.
Heh, it's not required for them to solve it. Just they get a lucky shortcut if they happened to do so.
Actually, I have an interview story about one of the words you have in this particular text.

By the way, the shirt wasn't a requirement for the job. It was just an added way to bypass the interviews a bit if they happened to decode it easily.
I just want to thank everyone for their positive feedback and all the great applicants. There's a lot of great talent and i'm sure we'll have no problem finding the right people. My only wish is that we have more room. I also wanted to take this time to respond to a couple comments.

why only girls you ask. I think this is a non-issue since most girls wouldn't want to live in a house full of "geeks", but in either case i believe it would cause for huge distraction and ultimately take away from what we are there to do, and that's build great companies. Don't get me wrong, the last thing i want is a sausage fest. Members/tenants are welcome to have guests of any sex.

You don't have to work on our startup solely. we actually would encourage you to have your own job and just moonlight with everyone else in the house on their respective projects. You can stay as long as you want or until the money runs out, which ever happens first. We have enough cash for a little less than a year.

Many of the applicants are relatively close to us (Philadelphia Area) so i will attempt to meet as many of you guys as possible in the coming months prior to the move.

I'll have a house blog up soon. I would like anyone that's currently working on a project and would like some coverage to send me a write up of their startup so that i can post it on the house blog. I find the idea of a community of hackers working to help each other really exciting, and i hope that more startups use similar methods.

Can anyone come up with name for the house. I need a domain name idea.
Don't forget to subscribe to my twitter feed for updates http://twitter.com/cbomb
How's the startup scene in Austin?
I actually think Beacon could have worked if participating companies gave you an at-checkout discount if you agreed to put it on your profile page. This is a big win for the company in question to get automated word-of-mouth for each purchase.
No mention of this guy? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6712605.stm
Great job, the design is nice. Just curious - about how long did it take to do?
Depending on the company, I would simply adapt the resume to reflect what you think they want to hear.

For the larger (possibly non-technical) companies, I would list the experiences and qualifications relating only to the directly applicable work you did (Developed this product, worked with that other thing, etc...). I would drop the title of "founder" and substitute it with "Lead Developer" or something similar.

For either a smaller company (where you may be expected to wear multiple hats) or a technological company (Google), I would put that "Founder" title right up there where it can be seen.

In the end, the resume is for getting an interview. There is nothing wrong with adapting it to reflect what the companies want to hear, provided that there is no stretch of the truth.
"Superlanguage" is the marketer's word for a DSL (Domain Specific Language), apparently.
That doesn't inspire me at all.
This game kinda reminds me of Sierra's "The Incredible Machine" back in the 90's, where you created a ridiculous Rube Goldberg thing to solve a puzzle. I spent hours on that game. This is like that, except it has realistic-looking physics, and you can create all the parts of the machine by drawing them. It looks cool!
On Market Positioning
Visa drops $18 billion IPO, the largest ever in US history.
who wants to race? :D
Pretty awesome. Slinkset looks like a great idea, good execution.
Man, if you could do this with street view...Epic.
I really like this characterization. The question is: does it apply to things that live/die by the network effect?
"The consensus here at the Dow Jones Web Ventures conference this week seems to be that the world doesn't need another social network."

If this is like the consensus in 1998 that the world didn't need another search engine, you should start a new social network immediately.
This article boldly predicts the past. Users will get bored with Facebook and begin managing their social network through... email! They'll ping all of their friends using the amazing "CC" technology! They'll send each other movie quizzes and captioned pictures of cats. Not to mention urban legends and spam.

Weren't these people alive in 1994? We had social networks based on email. People augmented them with things like Facebook because Facebook is fundamentally different.

The argument that email is like a giant, open version of Facebook has always seemed silly to me. Perhaps it's something about the name "social network" -- which, like all web-related names, was chosen before the inventors knew exactly what they had built -- that gets people focused on the graph. They look at Facebook and see a graph, and then they look at email and they see an even bigger, implicit graph, and then they proclaim that the future of Facebook is email, only somehow it will be smarter.

Facebook is not about graphs. Facebook works because it's a casual, public meeting place for your friends. If personal email is like your home office, and a blog is like a cross between a diary and a magazine, and Amazon is like the mall, and Google is like the Library of Alexandria, then Facebook is like Cheers -- the corner bar where you and your friends and some friends-of-friends and some folks you know from high school can see each other in public, catch up on gossip, maybe flirt a little, maybe play some pool.

Nobody invites all their high school buddies to hang out in their home office, sit around the desk, and watch them open envelopes. And it's not just because the office is kind of boring and stilted and full of business-related memos and unopened junk mail and stale coffee cups. The real reason is that your office is your personal space. It's full of your private stuff, it's a place that you go to get work done, and it's hard to entertain in -- it's a space designed for working with words, or having very detailed one-on-one conversations, not for public socializing.

Facebook itself may die, because the tides of fashion move on, but the notion of a public meeting space for casual acquaintances will continue. There will be other Facebooks, and they won't be based on email.
This is an overly simplistic and dangerous view of warfare. Increasingly, warfare is not about soldiers being sent to fight each other in some empty battlefield.

The pattern of U.S. wars since WWII has been expeditionary warfare where the U.S. sends its troops to fight with irregular forces, among civilians of other countries.

No war is clean, but this is a particularly evil setup, because the worst that American non-combatants experience is the return of their dead or wounded troops. On the other hand, the host country feels the full horror of war.

So, frankly, I don't care nearly as much about the volunteers who are sent to risk their lives as the civilian non-volunteers who are necessarily and inevitably harmed.

This is not a U.S. specific thing. It's just that as citizens of the top military power, Americans are spared the full horrors of war, yet have the ability to visit those horrors on others.

There is a reason why Europeans are not nearly as accepting of warfare.
What a pile o words. Summary: Greenspun strikes again.
Twelve Keys of Emotional Intelligence
How hard was it for them to get "V"?

In other news, as late as yesterday, Visa was a private company. Crazy.
Nonsense. People don't sit down and talk when they have less to lose. They negotiate when they have more to lose.

So what will actually happen is that these ultra-tech tools will just further shield voters from the nastiness of war, and allow their leaders to visit horror on those less technologically advanced.

What I'd like to see happen is the creation of some kind of independent news agency that uses UAV and robot technologies to bring back uncensored, uninvited news back from warzones. Of course if this were truly effective, that news agency itself would become a target.
When I took 6.001 (SICP) in Spring 1987 there weren't a lot of classes using Scheme either. I think the main difference is that SICP is no longer required for all of course 6.
A Trip to 'Fantasyland' - Should Google Buy Apple?
I want my Chevaline, dangit!
There's not really anything to get. I'm more worried about you being able to remember and spell it.
Can Blogs Beat CNET?
Think Centaur.
What If Banner Advertising Doesn't Work?
Agreed. That is the biggest flaw as far as I can tell.
Slurp slurp. It's not clear that PG is a great hacker or a great writer. He slammed out Viaweb (oooo, it was written in Lisp!!!), and cobbled together a few macros thrown on top of a Scheme. He hardly ranks with RMS, Torvalds, or even ESR. And his essays seem to focus more on conveying a sense of feigned wonderment and "gee I'm jus' an ordinary hacker wonderin' 'bout the bigger things in the world" faux naivete. So. Maybe not the best example. But maybe the best sucking-up.
http://blogs.cnet.com/
from looking at the implementation: http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=48493

why? It looks like it'll just make things even more complicated and messy
Right. This is a fearmongering title. "The Recession Will Hit The Web" seems far to dire for a "23% growth is less than expected."
I agree with you but I wouldn't be so stark. My email address book is still the one thing that I maintain and keep up to date. As social networks come and go, that address book remains current. That's why a lot of social networks will offer to import my contacts when I sign up to a new service. Email is the reference and is constantly being leveraged.

Also, as the article says, the initial impetus of connecting with friends of friends and old acquaintances from high school quickly wears off. Once that fun is gone, what is left is a broken and boring network that might not be so valuable to a business.
Products also get really nuanced at the higher "Power user" skill levels since users tend to specialize their skills in ever more specific ways.

For instance, in my line of work if you are a 3D generalist, it won't matter a ton what of the top 3 or 4 animation packages you go with, but if you specialize in really really high end character animation it matters very much.

Taking it even further, if you are setting the bar for character animation the way Pixar or Dreamworks does, you'll be using highly customized very specific tools written directly to handle the specific requirements of a particular film script.