skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
YouTube's IE6 support dies on March 13
I was going to post the same thing. Those blazing fast speeds do absolutely no good for me in SF when I get dropped calls in my house.
You don't go to Yahoo answers directly because you can either search one, or search them all at once. Do you still go to the bakery, then the butcher, then the vegetable stand, or do you go to a supermarket?

As for judging quality and verifying as a reliable fact, I agree, that would be excellent. This is something I was thinking about as part of a potential startup. Unfortunately, it's wicked hard to do without resorting to (probably paid) human experts.
It would have been an experiment if he had plugged it back in on request. That is to say the experiment determined they use the TV every six months or so. What actually happened is he made a unilateral decision to get rid of the TV. He couldn't do it by coming to agreement with his wife, so he removed all the cables and refused to restore them to force a change in his family's behavior.
Life Wasted in Virtual Reality
Oops. Started with "from where" and changed it to "whence" forgetting to delete the "from." My day is a disaster.
This is entirely correct.

Duck typing basically assumes that the programmer knows what he is doing. Duck typing especially assumes that the programmer does things more clever than a static type system would be able to express right now. But that is fine. Since this is duck typing, the programmer knows what he is doing by assumption.

Of course, however, this works in both directions. Duck typing puts a lot of burden on the programmer. Yes, you don't have to annotate things with types, but in fact, you have to worry MORE about types than using a statically typed language. In a statically typed language with type annotations all over the place, the compiler checks for simple and maybe even less simple errors. If you have duck typing, the programmer needs to do this work, by defining clear interfaces with clear documentations about the expected behavior of an object passed in here or returned over there.

In my opinion, this is again an instance of more defensive or more aggressive languages. Duck typing is more aggressive, as it requires more care of the programmer but allows the programmer to do more things, while static typing requires less care, but allows less things.
Now, I don’t know how much money these sites are making...[but]...I’m convinced you could make a good living in these niches.
Wear wrist splints for awhile, learn to move your arm instead of bending your wrist. I got used to it by doing an ergo keyboard.

Additionally, be careful how you support your weight during sex and pushups, it also is a potentially damaging instance.
Well there's a ton of good reasons why company X wouldn't want you talking publicly about this stuff. What if you suggested an SEO strategy and they implemented it really poorly, or even not at all? Or what if they had a really successful SEO strategy and still consider it part of their "secret sauce"?

Even when you don't have an NDA stopping you from talking about company X, you still probably want to maintain good will between you and them.
Mark your calendars for Google Code Jam 2010
You know what we should do? Get a hotdog stand, then set up shop right outside where the conference is happening. Then when people get hungry, they come out for hotdogs, and we'll be like: hey, it's mrshoe and maxklein from news.yc, so, what did the speaker just say. Then we take notes.

Then they'd invite us for the after party, and we'd blow all the money we made from hotdogs on drinks, get them drunk AND get even more information about the conference.
I really think that sort of misses the point. There are lots of "whole foods" that eaten in the wrong quantities are unhealthy. Like the article suggests I think the human body is pretty good at regulating what it needs. The key is moderation and diversity. Pay attention when your body tells you it's craving something. And don't keep eating when your full. This works whether your eating "whole" foods or "processed" foods.
Personal Communication demands to be based on Self-Similarity
Any person has his own personal life path. A person believes that it is truly unique. However we may find a number of identical things that actually makes us all similar.
There is actually a structure of certain characteristics that describe us. In studying people researchers find that they hold the same structures with only difference – there is a unique image of inside particles.

Read more: http://blog.youtego.com/2010/02/15/personal-communication-based-on-self-similarity/#ixzz0gOPxDzb2
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives
Convinced! Brilliant.
Birth Control Pills Affect Women's Taste in Men (2008)
Generating Deftype Forms In Clojure Macros
Registered. :)
Yeah, great idea. We (Heyzap) can add a bunch of ideas but would love to hear how everyone else does it.
The process for getting consumers to pay $5 is completely different than the process for getting someone to pay 25k, so I think it makes more sense to split them up. Even just focusing on lead generation would make a lot of sense, since that's one of the hardest parts of B2B sales.
What I don't understand is why AT&T doesn't just upgrade or build some towers in SF. As you point out, it's an absurd statistical outlier for their metro networks, and the peninsula isn't even all that big compared to some sprawling places like LA, from which I've never read any complaints about AT&T service.
I'm young, and I have to say that I learned the most - and often enjoyed working most with - from the older programmers. Some of them were the best developers I've known, able to work magic with the keyboard.

All I can say is that I'd have no problem hiring an older developer if I was in a position to, and I have trouble understanding ageism. As always, you do have to be careful to pick the motivated ones, but this isn't a problem that varies significantly across age groups.
Ask HN: help alpha test our new dating site (it's based on books)
Ask HN: How to predict startup viability?
There are a lot of web services out there and sometimes I am torn between my corporate days and my startup days. I think to myself, "I need to pick something here that will be a solution for a long time." Other times I think, "I don't really care about this, whatever, if it ceases to exist and takes my stuff with it, meh."

So in corporate mode, how do I know if a service is going to be around for a long time? How can I help make buying decisions or service selection decisions that will be the right decision for a long time, so I am not forced to rewrite everything and change my systems or reinstall an operating system or buy a new computer or a new phone. Integration is a nightmare!

Is there a way to future proof my decisions today? Sometimes I want to use a startup's service, but I don't know if it's a lost cause, but the big stable products that have history are very expensive. Sometimes open source is an option, but not always. Even then, when choosing among open source options, viability of the community and product are still concerns, so open source doesn't solve this problem in all cases.

The websites all look the same I can't tell. Sales people make products cost more, but help solidify viability. Or do they? What about investors does that help? VC? Bootstrapped? What sort of things should I look for to know if a service I use will be around for as long as I am?

I want to support startups by buying their services, but I don't want it to end up costing me more in the long run because I have to redo everything.
I'm with the original commenter: I can make something that people want without being part of YC, but the YC networking events are not independently reproducible. Many people say that higher education is going to lose out to online programs, but that opinion is oblivious to the institutional benefits that universities provide.

YC is becoming a similar institutional organization, where membership provides value independently of the reason for membership. That has interesting implications, as pg has said that Harvard/Stanford/MIT YC applicants statistically do no better than others. I would be very interested in a comparison of YC's output to similar programs (TechStars) to see if YC has succeeded in attracting / developing a statistically "better" population, or if YC membership benefits are being squandered on an arbitrary few.

There is a benefit to having a trusted crowd, but there may be a better way to decide who is "in". OTOH, it is good business for YC to nurture companies that it has invested in.
That is true. But a forum can be a means to operate a business.

The filmjackets.com guy operates the forum because he likes film jackets. The owner and the members research who makes the jacket and where to get it. Sometimes the jacket is custom/semi-custom.

In that case one very active member of the forum operates his own business where he will contact a jacket manufacturer and organize group buys. The active forum member is able to buy the jackets at a discount and then re-sell to the forum members.

I bought my motorcycle jacket based on the forum. From the forum I knew who the manufacturer of the jacket I liked was. Me finding that out on my own would have been very difficult, if not impossible. Without that site I would not have the motorcycle jacket that I ABSOLUTELY wanted.

ps. I was only a lurker in the forum.
Fluther: Tap the Collective
Federal Agency Ideascale
It's always a red-flag for me when in an engineering organization of statistically significant size (which does exclude YC start-ups, so don't view this as a judgment) there are no older engineers. It isn't just the age discrimination angle. It says something about technological identity and mission: they aren't solving a problem that has a barrier to entry (or they aren't going to be able to get past that barrier).

As someone pointed out in the "when an engineer goes to Google, a start-up dies" thread, there's an great value to having people with vast technical knowledge and experience: they'll be able to bring new concepts vs. merely new technologies to the table.

Being a founder is a different matter (the risk factor is much more significant once there's a family), but I don't see a reason to not hire older engineers (all else being equal). Disclaimer: I'm <30 myself, but benefited tremendously (earlier in my career) from contact with older engineers.
Teaching in the age of Mediocrity
I can't say I agree at all.

People can create a startup for lots of reasons- Wanting to change the world, wanting to make a lot of money, wanting to disrupt a market, whatever they want.
That's great. I wish them well.

YC is one way to get things started. It provides a pittance of money- $15K isn't really enough to fund substantial development, but it's enough to help build momentum.

The biggest thing that YC does provide is Networking and advice. Meeting with PG et all is a great way to get good advice on how improve your product, and how to handle the trickier aspects of running a company, such as buyouts, raising additional capital, and the like.

But beyond working with the YC staff, one of the other really nice advantages is working with the YC network. There is an ever increasing group of people who have gone through the same process you are- Who know a lot about what you're doing, and often have Great advice on what to do next.

To my mind, they're one of the best reasons to join YC. The problem is, like everything else that YC is facing right now, it needs to scale. Kn0thing can't meet with 400 founders to discuss the sale of Redit to Conde Nast.. While it'd be great, that'd be his new full-time job.

Holding a conference allows him to tell the same story once, and have everyone hear it. He can take questions, and answer them for everyone, rather than having 25 people ask the same variation of a question over and over.

So to your main point- I love the conference idea, and I think it's a great value-add to YC. People might do a startup for any number of reasons, but this increases the value of YC being a part of yours.
I went to a birthday party this weekend, and checked the email the same day for her wishlist, if any:

"I absolutely do not want more stuff. Actually, we're gonna have a box of crap that we want you to take stuff from so we get rid of it."

It's so nice to get older and have friends like that. :-)
Not too long ago, founders were often seen as mere grist for Silicon Valley VC mills - essential but hardly most vital to a startup's success. This has changed.

Founders today have significant control of their company’s formation and development. They no longer have to locate in the Valley but can operate from almost anywhere worldwide. The web has given them vast amount of knowledge about how things work, where they were once relegated to trying to pick up scraps around the water cooler. The infrastructure build-out has significantly reduced their capital needs, where they once routinely needed immediate large funding just to launch their basic product. The desktop PC is no longer a primary software development platform, where it once dominated and defined the range of startup opportunities available. The barriers are down, and there is much more room for sheer drive and talent to hold sway and define the path to success.

The dark side has always been there, as noted in this fine piece, and it will remain - doing startups does "suck" if one compares it to conventional ways of making a living but that is why the rewards can be large as well.

But demographic diversity is today quite pronounced in terms of racial, ethnic, and cultural mix (the white males among the founders I work with are today a distinct minority). Only on the gender side does it continue to lag. On that side, I am not sure how much will change in the near term. Given the otherwise radical changes that have occurred, whatever is causing this state of things to persist must be pretty deeply ingrained.
One phrase in particular I liked was "It never crossed Ms. Kenney's mind that a rich and abiding intellectual life was out of the reach of kids growing up in a tough urban environment."
Free Open Source Trouble Ticket System with multi agent inteface: OTRS
might as well just bug the room

or hack the anybots robot's webcam feed
research? Point to any?
Will these conferences be recorded, such that they're available for YC Summer 2010 companies and beyond?

I understand that people want to keep things private, and not talk to the whole world, but assuming YC continues to do well, there will be scores of companies for years to come. It would be valuable to have access to the presentations for the incoming class.
The Founder’s Institute: Entrepreneur’s “College”
Caterina Fake: Getting the startup equation right
Tim Bray called it being a Sharecropper back in 2003

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
Not sure if it's any different or better, but Project Sikuli (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/), an api for scripting visual actions in guis could be useful for testing layout and interaction.

Here's an example of using it for unit testing a gui: http://sikuli.org/documentation.shtml#examples/TestJEdit.sik...
A Funeral Is Being Held For IE6 On March 4.
Many people start in coding, but realize they are bad at it and look for opportunities to move into other areas (eg management). When I worked for large companies, many of my managers would list programming as their early roles. You could tell, or they would admit, that they were no good at it, didn't enjoy it, and got out as soon as they could.

The ones that are left are more likely to be good, simply because the poor ones with better opportunities have left.

Edit: "better opportunities" from their point of view, of course.
King James Bible: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

Shakespeare: "Within the gentle closure of my breast, / From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part;"

Samuel Johnson: "the place sacred to gladness of heart, from whence all fear and anxiety were irreversibly excluded."

Jane Austen: "Elizabeth was at no loss to understand from whence this deference for her authority proceeded."

Charles Dickens: "He began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine."

John Milton: "O, how unlike the place from whence they fell?"

William Wordsworth: "As Juno was unto the Theban blood,
From whence to Thebes came griefs in multitude." (He's paraphrasing Chaucer here, but the "from whence" doesn't come from Chaucer.)

On the other hand:

PostOnce: "Whence means from where."

I think I'll go with Shakespeare, Johnson, Austen, Dickens, Milton, Wordsworth, and the Bible.
Yes, in a way, but it happens much less often. If you leave off the final clause, then it is exactly equivalent of his rewritten example.
I actually had to move to VA about 4 months ago to take a job. I decided to go through EVERYTHING in my life and see what I needed and didn't, so I took a 3 bedroom two bath house worth of JUNK and shrunk it down to an 6X8 Uhaul Trailer. I now have 3 computers, 2 chairs, a bed, a rowing machine to stay in shape, some books and thats all I would take with me again if I did the same thing.. Ive never been so happy with all the junk I don't have...

I highly recommend living a minimalistic life style.
If you classify options as derivatives, then you're right. However, if you use that definition then the Berkshire/Goldman warrants are the simplest derivative that I've ever seen.

The Goldman warrants are an option to purchase an additional $5 billion of stock at $115 per share, any time in the next 5 (now 4) years. Basically, they're a plain vanilla call option.

What's really interesting about those warrants is that they behave identically to an equity purchase, only without the downside. Berkshire literally can't lose money. Plus, if the warrants are ever exercised, then Berkshire simply gets more equity. It never gets tarted up with default swaps and tranches and triggers and all that crap. The deal is the complete opposite of the 'casino' mentality that Munger is decrying.

So, yeah, you might be technically correct. However, you've also got to look at the spirit of the thing.
Staying together just for the kids is a win-lose situation that will decrease your happiness and consequently the kids' as well.

(I don't know anything about the author's particular situation.)
I'll jump in here, since I'm busy monetizing a niche community.

I run http://www.obsidianportal.com, and we're just turning 3 years old. I won't give stats on users, uniques, etc, since we keep that close to the vest. However, we do have over 10k RPG campaigns registered, and about 250k pages of content.

Most important, we're actually decently profitable, after 3 hard years. Still not ramen profitable, but it will provide a nice chunk of change this year. If our growth continues, I may be able to support myself full time in another 2-3 years, but I'm trying not to be too optimistic.

Before someone says, "You can make money off your passion" or "Do what you love and money will follow", I'd like to see their own personal evidence. I'm walking that road and I know how hard it is. Possible? Yes. But definitely not easy, and it takes waaay more than just passion. It takes late nights, hard work, thick skin, and a good bit of luck. Oh, and forget about "fail fast." If you do what you love, be prepared for a long, hard slog up the mountain to profitability. I love my community and my chosen subject matter, but it's still work and it's still hard.

To the OP: Can you point to a community/passion that you've personally monetized into a living? Maybe it's too much to ask that someone be a personal expert on everything, but being in that boat myself, I get a little irritated when someone breaks out the "Do what you love" line without backing it up with personal experience. That's not to say that the OP hasn't done it, just that I didn't see any evidence in my cursory glance over the blog.

One last bit of advice: All our success is due to charging subscriptions. Forget ads. They suck. Besides being crazy variable, they also annoy your users. Find a way to charge money for something. No, you'll never get as big as Facebook or Twitter that way, but that doesn't matter. You'll never get as big as Facebook or Twitter anyway, so don't even try to walk that road.
How to make shiny web 2.0 buttons
The only way the app would have been age limited for viewing and downloading was if the app was rated accordingly and parental controls were active. Otherwise anyone can see them, logged in or not, on the storefront (of all places!) in one of the top 10 lists or something. Anyone could have downloaded it as well, with only a warning about the application rating at download (you know, the same warning you see on apps with any user-generated content, adult rated or not). It didn't need to be like that.

Apple could have had an opt-in verification-required category for adult apps that only shows up at the bottom of the dropdown list of app categories and nowhere else only if you are signed into your verified account. They could have improved ratings and parental controls to satisfy parents and educators. Then the kids going to schools that want to use iPads for education don't have to see these, and the adults that don't want softcore porn in their face won't have to see them either.

Instead, Apple just went and removed these apps (well...not even all of them. nice double standard going on with SI and Playboy still on the app store...). That, I think, was a mistake.
Doesn't mean it does anything with the 96%

Charcoal absorbs about 98% of incident light, and it doesn't even use plastics
Tierney can be counted on to reflexively rubbish any topic. He's sometimes thought-provoking when I know something about the subject matter, and think it good, because he will attempt to convince me that I'm wrong and it's terrible (most notable example: recycling). But with background knowledge he's rarely convincing, and without background knowledge, it's entirely possible to come away knowing less. On balance, I avoid him.
Age-related decline is, according to my observations, caused by declining interest in the nuts and bolts of programming. When people lose interest, they start relying on high-level abstractions even when those abstractions are inaccurate or inadequate. Or they rely on concepts they've learned in the past, without learning what's new about the new technology. It looks exactly like intellectual laziness, but "laziness" is not the right word, because it is an unavoidable consequence of boredom.

Losing interest in technology is like tires losing their grip on the road. You keep going in the same direction, no matter which way you point the wheels.

Often age-related decline is masked by working in a static technical environment that a person has already mastered. It's like sliding uncontrollably down a straight road. Then, when the person needs a new job, they find that they haven't learned anything new in five years, are hopelessly out of date, and can't muster enough interest to learn anything new. The road finally curved, and they're in the ditch.

Personally, I've come to value my ability to be interested in the technical details of computer systems. It's embarrassing sometimes, but it's the key to my livelihood. (I've gone from being ashamed of it to occasionally wishing I had more of it.) I know I can't really be satisfied without an aspiration, or at least a connection, to grander things (fame, the mysteries of the universe, or boatloads of cash, depending on who you ask) but now I treat my geekiness as an asset instead of a distraction.
Apparently Johnson's dictionary calls from whence "a vicious mode of speech", but (see above) Johnson uses the expression himself. Ah well, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Speaking of which, by the way,

Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today." :-)