skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Honestly, your title using "sux" makes me wonder if you might be a little difficult to work with. I hate to read too much into one word, but I am just sharing my impression.

I read a neat post today that I think applies (your co-founder is providing poor customer service to you):
http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/09/four-strategies-for-respondi...
Markets change. If you are unable to adapt well, you will likely perish or grow obsolete.
This is unfortunately a common misperception.

Wrong. If you deactivate your account, you can bring it back. If you request it to be deleted, you have 14 days to cancel that request (by simply logging in) before it's deleted. Once it's deleted, that's the end -- you can't bring it back.

(edited to make clear which part of your comment is wrong)
There are a lot of good recommendations in the other comments, even though no one has responded directly to you - I recommend taking another look at this comments page if you haven't already.
This should deter Diaspora and other open social networking alternatives exactly as much as a monthly decrease in the price of crude oil should deter alternative energy research.
"I think if you wound the clock back, I'd like to think that we invented stuff in engineering that could have been marketed better,"

Unfortunately, this is completely backward. You create products that customers WANT not try to sell customers stuff your engineers invent.
I live in Charlotte and I have a killer twitter social graph type application prototyped and in development. Would anybody care to fund me so I can quit my day job?
Compare Broadband Speeds Worldwide (or My Broadband Sux)
(If you like global stats...)

Based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net, this index compares and ranks consumer download speeds around the globe. The value is the rolling average throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles.
"Never argue with a crazy person."

"You can't fuck crazy sane."

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well."
Ha... I definitely get what you mean. Others have compared these "rich site" apps to CD-ROM, another dis.

I think they are generally uninteresting, and not "the future," but could be an OK short-term product idea for legacy media companies. (But not business model)

Old-school publishing companies have lots customers who might not exercise the same effort in discovery that you and i do.

Let's compare to familiar territory: tech companies:

Shrinking technology paradigms (giant life cycle desktop OS's like Microsoft Windows, Sun's SPARC) can launch new products, and make money off of shrinking, but existing customers. That doesn't mean they're being realistic about how to survive the future. Or that these "short burst" products are a good use of their time.
(Sun maybe spent too much time denying SPARC's disappearance. MS seems to be doing just fine with Windows 7.)

Coming back to magazine apps... it's a short-term blast kind of thinking.
Sometimes those things work out great, and get you enough money to survive to the next era... sometime it doesn't.
I won't buy 'em. But depending on what else is going on inside of their organization, I don't necessarily blame msm for trying it out.
Yep - this seems like a good case where vesting would have helped.
Goldman Sachs has a P/E ratio of 5.94.

Microsoft's P/E is heavily "discounted" because it's considered a sort of swan song of easy money (the Windows and Office empire that they've coasted on). Apple's is considered the beginning of things. Stock value today isn't based on today, it's based on "tomorrow".
I see two potential next steps:

1) I agree with the other commenters that finding a programmer would be smart. Some places to find such a technical co-founder are:

+ http://www.linkedin.com/ - Go through your network, or do a search for programmers with potentially an entrepreneurial streak. This will take some time and might even cost you some money for their premium account (so you can email people not directly connected to you). You could also join some LinkedIn groups, lurk for a bit, and see if you can find any good fits.

+ http://www.builditwith.me/ - This is a new site and I'm not sure how effective it is. But it's an interesting premise and might not hurt to try.

+ http://founderdating.com/ - This is also a new service and is limited to a handful of cities. If you happen to be in one of the upcoming locations, you could give it a try as well.

+ http://news.ycombinator.com/ - I figured I'd just throw this one out there too. I'm not sure how effective it would be, but conceivably, you could find a technical co-founder here as well.

2) ig1 also brought up a great second option. Try to raise some funding so you can hire a programmer or development team. There are lots of ways to raise seed funding: equity on your mortgage, credit cards, friends & family, investments from those industry leaders, angel investors, etc. You can do some online searches to find a plethora of info out there.

Good luck!
15$ per MB when using tmobile in germany REALLY?
Im flying out to Germnay and wanted to make sure i can get my HN when im there.. but i guess i wont be.. since i dont have 15$/MB to spend thats ~1.5cents per KB??

_Bozenna P: Hi Maze , welcome to T-Mobile live Chat. I’m _Bozenna and I will be happy to assist you. Please give me a moment to review your question.

Maze: Hi

Maze: Im going to be going to germany today, and i would like to know what the data rates are there

_Bozenna P: I would be more than happy to assist you with this today.

Maze: thanks

_Bozenna P: I can understand why you would want this information.

Maze: yes

_Bozenna P: I am researching this now.

_Bozenna P: It may be 2-3 minutes.

Maze: ok take your time

_Bozenna P: Thank you.

_Bozenna P: It is $1.29 a minute.

Maze: for data?

_Bozenna P: No, that is per call. It is $15 per MB for data.

Maze: ohh ok.. i think i will use pen and paper then

Maze: kthnxbye
True. The SSMEs are more complex and expensive than disposable engines.

IIRC there is no large cargo vehicle in the current NASA plans. That's a bit sad. I won't be able to take my son to watch a shuttle launch and it's very likely he won't be able to take his kids to watch anything the same size.
My point is that a potential for abuse is not a specific enough criticism. Drinking and driving is illegal because it endangers property and other people, public drunkenness is illegal because it is a nuisance, smoking in public buildings is illegal (at least here) because it is a health hazard to others; things should not be outlawed for their _potential_ for abuse, the effects of their abuse should be outlawed. I recognize that at this point we probably have a difference of opinion that is difficult to argue past, but I wanted to clarify my position.
Even if it's a pain, it's possible and they cannot actively take steps to prevent you from backing up your email.

Not true for all the contacts in your fb profile.
This is absolutely sickening. Just one more reason to be aware of who/where you buy your food.
You right, some questions was not get useful answers, but some of them do. I asked what was interesting for me :)
Researching alternative energy and actually getting someone to pay for a product that uses alternative energy are quite different. I'm sure those people who are currently using crude oil products will continue to do so once they see the price difference in the alternative energy products.

The same thing goes for Diaspora. It's going to take a miracle to make the majority of Facebook users jump over to a social network that cannot be used for free.
> He needs to improve his skills, and that's teaching someone how to sell as well, but not from scratch. Or isn't it ?

OK, I didn't realize you were from Netherlands until I read that sentence and clicked on your profile. In English, learning does not imply teaching.
If you'd hit the 'reply' button seven years ago, you might have more reality to back up your assertions, but now you're just plain wrong.

In, say, 5 years Perl won't have the luster it once did

I like Perl, I think it's a solid language, but it's become stagnant amidst a huge degree of innovation.

As the best Perl hackers evaporate away off to concentrate on newer languages and technologies only the dregs will remain. Without exceptional hackers innovating within the language the lack of innovation of the language will become more apparent.

Perl's been on an upward trajectory for years now. The language and ecosystem has steadily taken on features from Perl 6 and beyond, most notably the Moose object system (which could totally beat up your favorite language's object system in a fight). And the best Perl hackers don't seem to have gone anywhere.

(And come on, you clearly don't like Perl, so it's disingenuous to say you do.)
I'm confused did they really change anything? Or just make the controls "simpler"? Are there still "only me" settings? (I got bored after reading the first few paragraphs of the history of Facebook)
Organic Lawn Care Manifesto
Fully agreed, no need in duplicating the effort. But an open letter is a pretty bad way to go about that, it screams 'you can't ignore me, I'm addressing you' because you are afraid that you will not be answered.

Open letters are good for joe public to reach the town mayor or Ty Coon when all other avenues of trying to reach them have been exhausted.

They're not exactly the best avenue to contact the people that run a competing open source project about a possible collaboration.

I think it matters how long they've been at it because that is how they describe other projects, as having 'too little steam' behind them. I can't really tell the difference between those other projects with too little steam behind them and this one.

Also he words it as though the Diaspora guys should get 'behind' his project, whereas the best way to ensure that there would be collaboration would be to leave it up to them to 'get behind' his code or to integrate bits & pieces as they see fit.

All this is completely ignoring the merits of what's been produced, I have no idea how good it is, for all I know it could be stellar.
IIRC Russian rockets are also taken lying down to the launch platform and are rotated into vertical position. You can see a couple pictures of that happening at

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russi...

http://www.energia.ru/english/energia/launchers/vehicle_n1-l...
there is no "tomorrow" for apple. Tomorrow's name is Android
The language and its implementation will limit the efficiency of the end-result (the running code).

The current Google Go compiler implementation produces slow code, but there's a potential to make it as fast as C.
The JavaScript implementation can be made better, but it will never be close to C.

Scala running on JVM will produce similar efficiency to Java. On multicore the Scala compiler will likely produce a faster code by default, but that advantage can be matched in Java with extra work.

Scala running on .NET will likely perform similar to C#.

Now it's up to the developer to create efficient source code for the given language. It is possible to write slower code in C than in JavaScript, but the focus should be on "normally".

Normally Scala gives you the same end-result with less work than Java.
There are exceptions.

More: http://www.scala-lang.org/node/25
(Look for "Scala Compiler Performance")

An older measurement:
http://fupeg.blogspot.com/2008/06/scala-vs-java-performance....
The Best Method to Master a Foreign Language, Guaranteed
I'd call myself a high-functioning pot smoker. Didn't touch the stuff for my entire life until I moved to SF. Certainly didn't expect to become a regular.

By day I'm a software developer. I smoke most nights, and I still get good work done (although it sometimes takes me longer). Have you ever gotten into a 'groove' when programming, when time fades away and you're generally very productive? Well, it's like that with pot...but more often, and to a greater degree.

It just makes everything better. Music sounds better, food tastes better, conversation is funnier, movies are epic-er, heck, even the laundry is fun again. Tonight I'm going to a concert, and I wouldn't dream of going sober.
None of those articles you provided state "American Cigarettes increase lung cancer risks more than Non-American Cigarettes" - Where are you getting this from?

Also, the equivalent of 300 chest x-rays is based on 'pack-and-a-half' smokers not typical smokers and it doesn't say anywhere specifically from American cigarettes. This is also based on a lifetime consumption I believe.
Yes, i write down some questions, which was interesting and useful for me on that time, and send about 70 emails. You can read all comments i got, only one guy write that he can't publish any interviews cause his contract.
Some of guys write me that they will answer later, but i think they forgot about this.
Anyway, i'm happy that i was able to get answers from those "cool guys" ;)
> Or even Ruby or Python- all of these have "limited tooling" as compared to Java.

The reason for the IDE argument is again, a continuation of the "Stockholm syndrome" argument. The whole reason the IDEs are considered "required" for Java developers is because the language is verbose. You don't need an IDE to write Scala: type inference means less typing (pun intended), having a REPL means you can evaluate code before compiling.

I haven't seen CDT and PyDev Eclipse plugins (which are reportedly well written, supported by large companies) get very much traction as you simply don't need Eclipse to program in C or Python: the languages are terse, the APIs (Python's standard library, C's stdlib and UNIX network APIs) are easy to keep in your head.

That being said, as Scala is more statically typed than Java (but at the same time supports a REPL) it's theoretically possible to have better IDE support for it then Java. IntelliJ's Scala mode works very well (and is free) and ensime (for Emacs) is simply incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Lai8IjLoY

On the other hand, the sort of tooling that actually solves difficult problems is just as available to Scala as it to Java: YourKit profiler, JVisualVM (and other JMX consoles), etc... In some cases there tools available (e.g., sbt, ScalaSpec/ScalaTest, Slime for Clojure) that are superior to the ones for Java.
The basic problem in both instances is that he's talking about the privacy setting issues using the language of fixing a technical problem. This allows him to sidestep addressing the much more important issue of trustworthiness.
Erin Andrews vs. Nicole Scherzinger
Of all the comments on the site and in this thread, this is the one that made me laugh.
Lucien - the first science fiction writer
Ok. I never even used the word teach in the original piece though...
I mean; heavy pot smokers are pretty non-functioning and
it seems a shame to risk more lively minds to that drudgery.


Correlation does not equal causation. People with no ambition tend to smoke pot frequently. However, that does not mean that people with ambition will lose it if they smoke pot. Anecdotally it has little or no effect on the ability of a person to "function."
I will give them the benefit of the doubt until someone proves that wrong. Right now, all you have is assumptions to rely on.
Start-up activity now higher than during Dotcom boom
I've been after Tantek to explain Whistle (his url shortener) to me for a while now, and I was glad that it fit in with this series of questions. I particularly liked his point about the url being expandable by any third-party because the algorithm is published.

Obviously this prevents some "monetization" of the shortener, but that's the whole point - to prevent your links from being beholden to a single provider.

I'll be continuing the series of interviews as we work through the 10 basic components of Tantek's personal DiSo 2.0 vision.
Yes, that's a part of the reason that the system is so complicated - to guard against corruption - or at least, to convince observers that you're trying to. (To be fair, some of this does work. But it still makes the barrier to entry far higher.)
This post shows that reddit isn't just junk, there truly are gems beneath the torrent of rubble...you just have to dig to find them...
Justice Department Said to Make Inquiry Into Apple
In other words; you really need to find a high functioning heavy pot smoker to give the theory credence - and I don't think that is going to be easy.

Carl Sagan. Richard Feynman. Steve Yegge. Thousands of others.

If you're involved in a creative profession, of which I think that software development is one, then smoking marijuana boosts your ability to function.
Doom! Doooom!
I've skimmed through that book and looked at the API over at Numenta: http://www.numenta.com/. They are focused on practical pattern recognition applications. Kurzweil has always been about strong AI and almost sci-fi type scenarios in his books. It's a way more ambitious goal, but he has predicted a lot of things correctly before. I'd check out some of his earlier books beforehand, just to get a better idea of his mindset.
You see, I have anecdotal evidence that this is the case (which is why I agrue we need to start real studies into the affects of pot before any decision can be made).

I have a couple of extremely bright friends (one of them was possibly the smartest guy I've met) who became pot abusers for all manner of reasons. One wanted (and had the skills) to be a stock broker. He spent the first summer of university trading and made a really strong start. But from the second year onwards his pot habit inhibited his learning/development and he now does door-to-door collections for a charity on minimum wage. He was probably my second closest friend at university so I am absolutely sure that cannabis was the cause of his decline.
maxklein said: "I'd never specialise in this language because everyone will turn to a teenager when you are listing your skills."

Coq is not a general-purpose programming language. People who "specialize in this language" generally work in a field where everyone is familiar with the name "coq" and nobody bats an eye.
I deleted all that stuff as well, only I won't be putting it back.
1. You can't teach tall.
2. Stay out of jail.

My readings:
(1. Recognize your innate gifts and use them.)
(2. I love you, have fun, don't be too youthfully indiscrete.)
Interesing point; I'd have to mull on that (I wonder how heavy they were as users - anyone know?).

(as a programmer I found that pot, which I tried for a couple of months - see elsewhere for my reasoning - didn't personally boost my ability to function, but instead tended to hinder it - particularly when not high)
The US government created a futures market in political assassinations a few years ago, so I can't imagine they'd have a problem with a futures market in drug prices.
Ah, that's what I get for skimming.
>Simply because what's the use in pushing crime somewhere else; if the aim is to fix/reduce crime then it's a pointless exercise :)

I totally agree, and that's why we should bring back alcohol prohibition. Sure, it would increase alcohol-related violence, but "people will commit crimes regardless", so what does it matter?
I couldn't agree more. Well done. Any plans on releasing the source? I've been looking to play with AppEngine for a project just like this.
WhisperSystems: Voice and Text Encryption for Android
I made the jump from online advertising to clean tech. It was not easy to re-start my professional network and learn all the new domain knowledge, but it paid off in being able to work in an industry that I really care about.
Not only that, it says nothing about stress levels (running is a great way to relax). How hard were you working out -- low hr runs, sprint intervals, tempo runs? Were you already a bit sleepy? Did you have established circadian rhythms? “There’s no room for exercise to improve sleep, if people are sleeping fine. [Mr. Youngstedt] said."

I am skeptical of the results when the researchers say that they cannot count on the volunteers to accurately gauge their exertion levels but they can accurately gauge the quality of their sleep (remembering of course that 6hrs good sleep feels more restful than 8 on a plane). Also, gauging over-training is a pretty difficult exercise (pardon the pun) which definitely messes with a person.
Free tool shows why your site has such a high bounce rate . . .
VoltDB is out, benchmarks against Cassandra
Creating an app to extract Facebook contacts would be a piece of cake.
Hot list of resources for energy hackers.
Mind you, the Korean loves America. The Korean practically writes a love song to America every chance he has. But there are certain things about contemporary America drives the Korean crazy, and this is one of them: the idea that the process of learning is somehow supposed to be fun. Just drop it. Forget it. What is fun is the result of learning – the infinite amount of fun when you finally put the finished product to use. And truly, that applies to second language acquisition as well as anything else. Your horizon will expand beyond the limit of your imagination. You will gain perspectives that you couldn’t have even dreamed of. Don’t be a whiny bitch. Your sacrifice will be worthwhile.

This should be shouted, at top volume, to everyone entering university. Great advice.
"heavy pot smokers are generally low-achieving/non-functioning due to the drug"

That's just like, your opinion man.

(update: I am lowering the tone with a Lebowski quote)
What I'm saying isn't necessarily that this is a reason against legalization, just that we shouldn't call legalization a solution to the crime factor.
Funny you should remember GEM, I actually quite liked it.

Digital Research made some nice things.

I agree, there can be such an effect, but since every phone carries windowing system and OS on board from a single vendor (for the most part) the competing standards are not running on the same hardware. In other words, you are not going to take your iphone and put android on it, unless you are exceedingly technical. (in the end it is just software, so sure, it can be done).

Then there is the fact that there are already open software stacks for phones and I expect that trend to continue.

The open source movement missed out on the desktop wars, simply because they got off the ground much later, but I expect the cell phones arena to be different in that respect.

Android is a really big step in the opening up of the cell phone world.
Is there a rule that says that if you're going to work on a distributed social network you have to be bad at naming things? socknet, really?

Also, do we really need a solution that is distributed or would a dropdown box on Facebook that says "Visible to:" and lets you select a group (e.g., Friends, Family, Everyone) do?