skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hope you enjoyed that ad hominem attack. Because regardless of how you slice it, there's a conflict of interest between presenting this forum as a neutral and supportive environment for entrepreneurs and actively competing with its members.

I don't have any illusions about competition and am inclined to believe if not YC then someone else, but at a minimum this tarnishes the image of YC as an organization which supports underdogs, kicks dirt in the face of any independent Indian hackers hanging out here, and discourages anyone not looking for funding from participating. That's a lot of bad karma to exchange for a token investment of a few thousand USD.
long working hours? Are you looking for an employee or a cofounder?
Live iPhone 4 press event coverage
CoverItLive provides such a service already: http://www.coveritlive.com/

ArsTechnica is currently using their service to cover this same event:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/liveblog-iphone-4-...
Thanks, someone hitting it pretty hard but I think it should all be cool now.

I'm still debating the scrolling box. The idea is to have all the results in one place, but I'm considering alternatives. May A/B test this some point soon.

Results are by standard search approach; work well in some cases and less well in others. I'll be trying to improve the ordering in the near future. Also the ability to filter by facets means it isn't all about the results - the navigation should work with the results.
Live from Apple's iPhone 4 press conference
> There is no shortage of men demonstrating to younger males that they can make it in technology.

What, exactly, are these older men doing such that younger men can benefit and younger women can not?

If your response is "they're men", that's not something that they're doing. That's something that the younger women are doing, or rather, not doing, namely thinking that the gender of X matters in "X is doing Y, so I can do it too" when it doesn't.
Read author Tim Ferriss, he writes about all sorts of ways to automate your life. His book is called "The 4 Hour Work Week." He also has a pretty good blog.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/
Thanks, this seems like a good argument that I hadn't considered.

I like pattern matching a lot so this appeals to me.
Please stop stacking your negatives. I can't read that last sentence.
Amen.

There are, obviously, some population differences between men and women; for instance, on average men are taller. Blame the hormones. But people confuse mean and variance, and this is one case where instinctive ignorance of probability is tantamount to sexism. In fact, it's plain rude to do that to people.

Okay, an example. Let's say that on average, men are better fighters than women - whether that's societal or innate is neither here nor there, but take it as generally true. It doesn't change the fact that my sister could kick my arse. If I trusted in statistics there, I'd have been wearing my teeth as a necklace by the age of ten.

So even if the means are different, the variances are so high that you can't know what the person in front of you, male or female, is good at. What that means is that if you go into something like this with preconceptions based on gender, then you are being unfair to the person in front of you - male or female - by not judging them on who they are and what they can do. And if you fail to allow for the gender roles that society forces people into, then you're closing yourself off to talent. And if you close yourself off to talent you can use, your company deserves to fail.

I don't want to be that guy or that company.

(This is pretty personal for me, actually; my mother taught me BASIC when I was seven or so. She's a much better programmer than I am.)
That's a good insight about Dunning-Kruger meeting the criteria for a sticky idea. I think the fit may be even better than you say. Everyone knows somebody who overestimates themselves in an annoying way, and I think DK hooks up with these memories instantly. So while DK is not a story per se, it might as well be; it releases stories in the brain.

I'd add another reason for the surprising catchiness of the Dunning-Kruger Effect: it's easy to say. Seriously, say "Dunning-Kruger Effect" several times: it's easy to say and actually feels good, like you've said something really substantive. Sounds trivial, but I bet it isn't.

Edit: oh and here's another: it's self-flattering. Who, on hearing this principle, has ever thought, "Oh, that's just like me, always overrating myself"? No. We all identify with the competent hero, unappreciated even by himself.
Agreed.

When you have new technologies solving old problems what you need to do is use the features of the new technology in new and creative ways to serve the same need that the old technologies were serving. These guys are just using the new technologies to add a few new bells and whistles to the old way of doing things.

I think some clever programmer is going to address this market in a totally new and creative way and this will cause a big stir and all the newspapers will finally turn off their tree consuming presses.

That said though, I don't think this programmer is going to come from Bing, Microsoft, or any of the big software companies. He will probably be some college kid who, like zuckerman, just has an epiphany one day and then writes the code that solves the problem.
We’re not perfect. Phones aren’t perfect. - Steve Jobs
Successor To The Nintendo Wii Will Not Offer 3D Gaming
This endeavor relies on a healthy ecosystem of news. This product is a recommendation system, a glorified web browser--not a newspaper. And it's insane to think that destroying the newspaper business is in these founders' best interest, if indeed they wish to "deliver the final blow to the newspaper industry." The arrogance and short-sightedness of the statement is thick.

I will never understand so many technical folks' glee in watching the decline of investigative reporting, media companies, publishing houses, and so on--especially when so many applications like this simply exploit the work of others, add a layer of abstraction on top. ("Exploit" being non-pejorative, simply descriptive.)
Steve Says Relax
Freelance web developers: how do you handle the build up of maintenance work?
One problem freelance web developers face is that alot of times the client will want a maintenance contract. If you build enough websites and agree to maintain some or all of them, eventually you could hit a point where you can't take on any new work because you're doing maintenance all the time. How do you guys solve this problem? Outsource the maintenance somewhere? Stop taking on new work? Something else? Thanks!
How I cleaned up my music collection with 22 lines of ruby
As far as I know, there's a lot more to Java that isn't optional: everything must be inside a class definition, everything must use the garbage collector.

In C++, you don't have to declare a single class or create a single template.
The Coolest Black And White Websites
Chocolate Milk: A better 'Gatorade'
When rejection occurs after an interview, I generally try to my best to identify what I did wrong and prepare to the next interview.

My advice don’t feel disappointed if you don’t get the OK there are many reasons why someone get rejected, most of them not necessary skill based; so JUST MOVE ON.
do pocket calculators work in that level of lighting?
"I think the author is correct that women may be more ready to launch a start-up when they're 40" I think this is a valid statement.

However, the argument then becomes, 'Is it a good business strategy to invest and nurture a pool of 40 year old entrepreneurs?'
“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”" -George Carlin
Bears Take RB Unga In Supplemental Draft
This is a bit tongue in cheek, but I'll argue that reading is the other half of an overlooked set of skills. I'll write up a clear problem description -- including a structured format, not just detail -- to find myself subsequently repeatedly correcting the recipient. Conversing quickly determines that they haven't actually read what I've written; sometimes they're honest about this, sometimes not so much. But it's apparent, either way.

I try to make myself briefer -- my writing condensed -- in the hope that the shortness of the message will avoid invoking avoidance based purely on the volume of content. And I try to communicate less often, collecting observations into a few well-composed summaries rather than a rapid fire flurry of messages -- particularly when I know the recipient will not be addressing the topic immediately in any event.

But then I get accused, typically by some less technical manager, of "not communicating enough".

All by way of saying, I guess, that I find skill in writing very important. But there's a certain point where the problem becomes your audience's (or, depending on mood, leave off the apostrophe s ;-).

P.S. I note now your use also of the term "oral". There, too, there is the problem of the other half. Meetings that largely reiterate previous meetings, because the attendees apparently didn't make an effort to retain the information. This... syndrome can become self-perpetuating. People come to expect that anything important will be repeated at them, potentially ad infinitum. The repetition becomes expected and depended upon, making it in turn necessary.

People sometimes wonder why I take so many notes. But a month or two later, I can tell you what happened in that meeting. And if my work depends upon that information, I've executed accordingly.
http://stevenbird.info/2010/07/15/droidx-today-is-the-day-mo...

http://nexus404.com/Blog/2010/07/16/droid-x-catches-heat-ove...
Good ideas: the discipline of writing things down
Startups are very risky, men are more predisposed to risk: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep062942.pdf
A fluent interface to manipulate java collections
Woz has spent decades teaching 5th graders. He donated most of his money to the school district he worked with. My bias might be showing, but this seems a lot better approach to education than throwing money at it like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

Starting in 2000, the Gates Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its first big project, trying to revitalize U.S. high schools by making them smaller, only to discover that student body size has little effect on achievement. [1]

At the expense of sounding like a troll, it amazes me that throwing tons of money at problems is commonly accepted as a noble thing. What we're lacking isn't money, it's imagination - we need new ideas for measuring achievement and improving education, and while economic power can act as a catalyst to implementing such changes, it's in no way sufficient for making a lasting positive impact on its own.

1. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_30/b41880582...
This is not how the diagnostic chain for Celiac is designed to work. Optimally, you would proceed like so: (a) patient has symptoms consistent with Celiac; (b) patient gets tested for either antibodies (e.g., antiendomysial IgA) or genetics; (c) if 'b' is positive (or sometimes if it is negative and clinical suspicion is strong) then biopsy is performed.

Since the biopsy is both more sensitive and specific than the genetic test, one should not side with the genetic test over the biopsy in most circumstances. The genetic test cannot rule out Celiac. Why? The genetic test looks for specific common variants. It cannot discover anything that is not already in the database; therefore, it cannot rule out Celiac for you - it can only make it more likely or less so. (As an aside, this is why treating 23andme as a medical tool can be dangerous. Let's say you have common genetic variants protective for breast cancer -- but, lo and behold, you also have a rare variant previously undescribed in the literature and not captured by the 23andme chip. You actually have a high risk of cancer, but would think just the opposite based on the common variants examined by 23andme. Sorry for the lengthy aside.)

Let's say that Celiac is 100% determined by your genetic variation. It's still possible that there are common variants that cause Celiac, and rare ones. The tests that we have right now only look for relatively common variants, which is why they have varying accuracy in people of different genetic backgrounds but generally are positive in 95% of people with biopsy-proven disease... which gets me back to my main point, which is that you have a biopsy; the genetic test is nothing more than a waste of your money from a biological standpoint. From a peace-of-mind standpoint, I can appreciate why you want this.
I absolutely think that should be discussed. I don't doubt that there are some consequences of that, but I don't think they're nearly as extreme as some people paint them to be.

Edit: I don't think that anything should be barred from discussion. Taboo topics are harmful, in my opinion.
It's most likely a result of bad programming. My guess is that the page is made up of a bunch of components using templates.

Instead of including the GA-JS in one master template, it's probably being included in one of the templates that gets rendered multiple times.
The first thing I searched on, http://cookblast.com/cooking/banana_bread throws a server error.
Comic: That's Not How You Start A Business
Thanks for offering your perspective, it's the best thing I've read in this thread...
>>>"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...<<<

I actually come to hacker news for a reason close to this. This is a space where no one judges me, belittles me, or criticizes me for things I couldn't possibly choose. I know that I end up wasting a lot of time here, but somehow it is a release that keeps me sane and makes everything else possible. Maybe someday I'll end up being a "hacker". Maybe not, but the lessons I've learnt on these pages will last me an entire lifetime.
I remember in fifth grade we were learning to multiply 3 digit by 3 digit numbers. My teacher wrote two 3 digit numbers on the board and I immediately blurted out the answer. He looked down at his notes, and just looked back at me, I had been right.

Like you, I've never had this experience again. It makes this feel true: http://xkcd.com/447/
Effect of testosterone on economic behavior: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824151254.ht...
First time I've laughed out loud at a Ycombinator comment.. well done.
How will you reach these customers? Will they find you, or you find them?
Zach, I like your articles.

Though, I think they could be made easier to read by adding sub sections, so the structure of the article may be understood at once. My 2 cents!
Mirage: OCaml on the Cloud
Actually the analysis of DK in this article doesn't make the same mistake the author of THAT article is referring to. Both are good reads though.
The processes become stale, memory gets corrupted, and the server launches a new process.
I think that there are many things done in the same vein with the intent of alleviating minority's struggles due to racism that do more to promote the concept of racism than not.

I'm not confusing equality with uniformity, although it's hard to express why that is clearly.

deep inside of us we all want to be better than the people around us

I disagree with this, particularly strongly with the absoluteness of it, and I think that it's an attitude that is mostly propagated by a weird bunch of cultural catch-22s.
From a right-hander, this has been a non-issue for me.
What I read is this, "I want a Y-combinator, except where I live, aimed at my gender and with a schedule I can accept. Oh, and please supply the tech talent I need. If things work out I can reward the coders with salary and possibly a CTO position down the road."

Need I explain what is wrong with that picture?

If you don't see the problems, you might start by reading http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Cknew%E2%80... and seeing how many critical pieces don't work. Starting with the whole supply/demand issue around technical and non-technical co-founders.
What they're doing is awesome, but it's not an excuse for the anti-competitive crap MS pulled, unless that was something they did for philanthropy's sake. But it does make up for it, I think.
Do not be fooled by the field of dreams. It was a movie. You have to do much more than build it before they come.
Yes, that's a much more succinct way of putting it.
Which is an excellent argument not to discriminate against an individual.

However, what the OP and this thread are discussing is ways of 'fixing' a low percentage of women in startups. Which could be caused by either women on average having a worse skill set for startups or on average having less of a desire to take risky economic decisions.

If these are the causes then there isn't likely to be any way to 'fix' it.
I agree, excellent content but a few headings would make this more readable.
Apple to give away free cases to iPhone 4 users
It has taken longer to get to where I am that I thought. I have a number of spreadsheets I've made of the time showing cash flow based on number of customers. The growth has been much slower than I wanted. Part of that is the software aspect is much easier to me than the marketing. I would say that software is absolutely critical, but it is only the first 10% of the business. The rest is sales/marketing etc. That is what is going to get you the 200 customers you want. Its not the software by itself.

Even for Patrick, he did't get there over night and he is very good at his marketing. But the good news is that you can get there. I'd focus on the first customer. Getting that first customer is one of the best feelings ever. And the good news about SaaS, is that they stay with you. I still have my first customer paying me every month.

My thoughts were similar to yours going into it. I only need 500 customers and I'm set. I'm a long, long way off. The problem is not that there are not enough customers, the issue is reaching them. I have a ton of competition in my market, some good, some bad. I'm somewhere in the middle product wise and somewhere near the bottom half marketing wise. At my current rate of customer acquisition, it will still be a few years until I get there. But I keep plugging away.

Good luck!
I like how you pull the video straight into the site rather than sending me off to one of those terrible recipe sites. But you're going to need to scrape the recipe itself and display it under the video so that I can actually, you know, cook stuff.
The contract needs to stipulate a amount of hours (like 6 month timeframe or 36 hours or labour) and how anything above that is a new project or for to them to work on themselves, sub-contract etc.
I suspect you could have sampled Java web startups vs those still using C, Perl and CGI back during the time of Java's explosive growth and seen a systematic difference in profitability.

Amazon.com has made a lot of money, hasn't it?

So any idea that there could be some statistical correlation between language choice and any kind of measured success is, on the face of it, absurd?

A relevant statistical correlation? Yes.
Wow, they're giving everyone a free case. How much is that? I know it's about $20 retail but how much does it cost them as a write-down?
Analytics of a wedding engagement
Express 1.0beta released for nodejs
Interesting, they're going to give away a free case. There seemed to be some sentiment that wouldn't happen.
I keep reading about amazing new designs for solar cells every month. I want to see something I can buy. Where are my actual panels?
Thinking from an engineer's perspective, this cap has effectively shut off oil flow from the wellhead. We've heard before, that the pressure of the oil spewing from the wellhead is very high. Possibly the reason that this well has had so much trouble to begin with. So the longer this cap prevents oil from leaking out, the longer there is a possibility for the pressure to cause damage to the cap and start the cycle all over again.

It seems like a very responsible thing to open up some valves on the cap and collect some oil to reduce the pressure on the cap.
But isn't it true?

If someone is succeeding as a programmer, that says nothing about how they'll do as a manager. Therefore pushing for that promotion is a good way to wind up getting promoted to something you such at. Which is the Peter Principle at work.
That doesn't exactly work.

echo "a" > a; du -sh a; rm a

2.0K a

dumpe2fs /dev/sda1 | grep -i 'Block size'

Block size: 1024
Classic, "Apple: Pushing around MobileMe"
Free bumpers.

If you already bought one, you'll get a refund.

If you didn't, they'll mail you one.

If you want to return your undamaged phone for a full refund, you can do that, too.
Source: I worked with efuses on a major electronic component that's statistically about 20% likely to be sitting on your desk.

An efuse is basically just a low-power fuse. Think of it like a one-way switch. You can switch it to the other position exactly once, but you can't switch it back. Lots of OEMs use it for permanent storage, some of them DRM-related. Market segmentation is a common usage.

Your comment is akin to a homeowner installing an alarm system. "What do these wires have to do with keeping burglars out?" and "damn wires and their electric fields, there are much less sophisticated ways of keeping burglars out".

This is misinformed in two ways: 1) efuses are regularly used to prevent tampering with hardware although they can be used for other things. I say this as someone who worked on a product where they were used in just that manner. saying you can do other things with them is like saying you can peel grapes with a machete.
2) efuses are not terribly sophisticated. There's a good chance you have some on your desk right now. There are cheaper ways of doing storage, but the cheaper ways do not preserve the property that they form part of a good security system. So actually the statement is "because the system is this complicated, we know it is a security measure against tampering".
Last I heard one of the original HBase guys quit programming altogether and went into plumbing.
Brief summary of what they've said so far:

1. Similar things happen to all smartphones. (They had videos showing them happening to many other smartphones.)

2. This isn't making lots of people return their iPhones. (Return rate ~ 1/3 that of 3GS at the same point in its life.)

3. The iPhone 4 does drop more calls than the 3GS, but by less than 1%. (Not clear whether that's 1% of all calls or 1% of calls dropped on the 3GS.)

4. They're going to give everyone a free case and refund everyone who's bought one from them.

5. They've got improvements coming up for the proximity-sensor problems some people have had.

6. That's about it.
Those pictures of other phones losing signal were hilarious.

Yes, if you hold other smartphones in a clam-like grip then they do lose signal. But not when you place a single finger on one small spot on the outside of the phone.

It's good that Apple will be providing free cases, but it's still going to suck when they start releasing phones with tweaked antenna insulation in a few months that eliminates this issue.
$1mm for software development, and servers, and bandwidth, and all that
$9mm for marketing
$10mm for sales and business development