skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
you are 25. is this your first 'big pond' experience?

I mean, yeah, it's hard. When I was 20, I got an opportunity to work with some of the best people in my business. (I got the guy who hired me to write a preface to my book... In it, he calls me a 'dumbass kid' which pretty much sums up the situation.)

I did okay at the job until the company crashed (In about 2001, you see) as the pressure went up, I couldn't deal with it. I felt like I was not remotely qualified to work there, or really in the industry at all, and that I was the reason why the company was doing so poorly. I ended up quitting, and taking several months off to road trip. This, of course, ended when I ran out of money, and when I found that working at a coffee shop was more likely to require a degree, it seemed, than getting another SysAdmin gig. I ended up getting a job at a local ASP, and not doing any thing else notable until I started my own company a few years later.

In retrospect, I handled the situation all wrong. The company survived, and if I toughed it out, I would probably be another 3 years ahead in my career right now, and I'd be much closer to the incredibly awesome contacts I made there.

But, the point is, there are always going to be people who are better than you are, and if you can work around those people, do so. you will learn a lot. On the other hand, going from a small pond where you get to be the big fish to the big pond, where there will always be people with whom you simply will never be able to compete, is, well, quite an emotional shock.

If you are a healthy person, you will eventually come to accept and appreciate people who are better than you without getting the feeling that your ego just got kicked in the nads. On the other hand, if this is your first 'big pond' experience, the blow to the ego is very common and generally something that should be expected. You can get over it.
I like you, feel overwhelmed with grief after Reading HN at times. Many times I have had great idea's, but lack programming skills (sys admin with asterisk knowledge) that I have not been able to execute them quick enough using oDesk developers etc that they have gone in to other peoples portfolio with great success, leaving me feeling pretty useless.

My problem is, I get basic php, I can work with mysql just about, but can't design/CSS or get JavaScript!

I keep saying, it can't be that difficult, but just don't get it when I try!

Since I found HN, 6 months ago, I have spoke to some great people, been given very good advise. I have even started a project with iPhone app using outsourced developers but it's slow (try telling a Latvian how to orient a photo depening on type). I long to be a great programmer, I would love to have even LAMP skills (could do with your talent, get in touch if you want to work together).

One thing I do know, I'll make it, why? Cos all the cool talented talented programmers here reply.
Also remember that in the comments you'll get a heavy selection bias. I, for example, comment more heavily on kernel development, virtual machine R&D, HPC, and RDBMS engines 'cause that's what I work on ;)
My wife has the occasional habit of cherry picking the best bits of all of our friends/acquaintances lives, combining them into one and using that as the yardstick as to how we are doing. She'd be the first to admit this btw:)
Now they just need integration with the rest of the phone (make skype calls from the phone app, from contacts list, etc) and they'll be caught up to where the Nokia N900 has been for a year!

What a revolution Apple.
> Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Being pretty isn't much, but actual usability of SO is quite poor. I've used it since the beta and I learnt about some functionalities through this analysis, that I missed because they're so badly laid out!

I'm pretty sure that stackexchange-based sites NOT targeted to highly technical people will fail, because of the extremely poor UI.
that site can slurp some stuff out of your address book.

More specifically, it can slurp some stuff from your personal address card that you've set in AddressBook.app
This hack does not allow you to get the address of someone's mother-in-law.
Thanks, i actually searched github and found like 10 sample apps with source code.
The Impossible Function (a C puzzler)
A tutorial for LLVM uses a toy language which has only the datatype "double". The toy language can call C functions which accept doubles and return a double.

I decided to extend the language so that instead of using double, its sole datatype would be a pointer to a function. That function would itself accept pointers to other functions, and return pointers to functions. Instead of passing a value, you would pass a pointer to a function that produces the value. (Although that value in turn is also a function, it can eventually bottom out by returning special addresses; for instance returning the NULL pointer can mean "false".)

Here's the puzzler: Such a function signature is impossible to express it the C (and C++) type system! I encourage readers to try to formulate a typedef for it.

Naively:
typedef func_ptr (^func_ptr)(func_ptr);

Edit: Using ^ in place of asterisk to represent pointers because the markdown eats asterisks.

Except that that is invalid code (you can't reuse func_ptr in its own definition). What if you try to declare the function without a typedef? Observe (successive iterations of replacing the word "void^" with a function pointer):

void^ (^the_function) (void^ (^)(void^));
void^ (^)(void^) (^the_function) (void^ (^)(void^) (^)(void^ (^)(void^)));
void^ (^)(void^) (^)(void^ (^)(void^)) (^the_function) (void^ (^)(void^) (^)(void^ (^)(void^)) (^)(void^ (^)(void^) (^)(void^ (^)(void^))));

Now, it's certainly possible to think of types that are logically impossible because they are recursive, such as a struct that contains itself as a member. The difference with the Impossible Function is that it isn't a logical contradiction (a function that can accept a pointer to itself or to a function like itself). Furthermore it has a perfectly good representation in machine code; it would just be an indirect call to a function after pushing the its pointer argument on the stack.

It's a hole in the type system.
Looks like you anticipated Scott Adams' "High Ground Maneuver" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1530274) in that essay - "One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of abstraction."
For comparison, symmetric coroutines in Haskell:

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/Coroutine
You have to read a cryptic 312 page document to get in on the new TLD domain game. What is this "ICANN" and where does all the money go when they release a new round of TLDs? Seems to me like it's all a game.
Thanks for your suggestion first.

My product is a tool that you can select some part of web page to convert it into various formats (CSV,TXT,Images...etc.). It is still under development.

I think this service is a little like http://www.korekt.me/. Someone will need it, but scattered worldwide. How to reach them is hard.

I am thinking what I can do after public it.
A similar problem is accidentally dumping binary data to the terminal screen (via an incautious grep, for example), as various bytes get rendered as their corresponding control characters. This is even worse on windows (or at least used to be, I think Win 7 fixed this) where ^G is hard-wired to the system speaker which is fairly difficult to mute effectively.
While writing, it occurred to me that this might be the primary effect. There appears to be some sort of counter in my head that counts awesome comments. There is no counter, however, for number of awesome users, or number non-awesome comments. I ignore them without effort. But due to this selection bias, the awesomeness counter gets to such a big number that it's quite overwhelming, and it feels that 100% of comments are awesome.

I suppose I can accept the fact that the majority of people don't represent anything to get flustered about. However, there are people way more talented than me, doing much more important-seeming (that is to say, things that are getting more attention) things, and in general just being more successful than I. I truly mean it when I say "good for them," but it eats away at me. Quarter-life crisis I suppose.

I was on this site as a different name over a year ago and have recently returned. I can tell you that I noticed a pretty significant difference in the quality of users now on this site. There are more low/medium quality comments, and the quips aren't as clever. What's more concerning is the upvote counts on those comments...

That being said, there's no other place I'd rather be.
Like somebody wise once said, you should always surround yourself with people smarter than yourself in order to grow.

If you can't do it in the real world because of your geography or the quality of your physical peers, Hacker news is the best place to hang around, particularly if you're a comput(er/ing) enthusiast.
I think HN has enough upvote/downvote data for all its users such that it could be feeding us articles based on our voting history and the voting history of people similar to us (non-trivial problem, of course).

I think it's possible to build a news-site that feeds, say the OP, a news feed that he is 'comfortable with'.

In a more general sense, news sites like HN that use up/down are 'dumb' in the sense that they make a crude (but reasonable) approximation to what each individual wants via a simple[1] summation of what the group wants.

[1] unless I'm mistaken
Children's hospice fundraiser stopped by copyright
Advice from founders who bootstrapped their way to success
+1 for "there is an email in your inbox right now, that contains the link." That's a great idea - I've been approaching it as EITHER an email OR a call.
There are plenty of students from well-off families - that doesn't mean that they personally have access to a lot of cash to spend on whatever they want.

Regardless, I wasn't trying to give an actual accounting of Zuckerberg's thought process. It was more of an attempt at an easy joke about the proclivities of the average 19 year-old college student.
I really like how on HN the content of the comments is emphasized -- no colorful avatars or signatures or any of that stuff.

I wonder if that maybe helps add to...like subconsciously, all the comments appear the same so you start feeling like HN is this big thing that 'knows everything' without realizing how many different people are contributing their knowledge of whatever area.
Ajnara Homes- 9999748000
Understand that it's fetching the data from the system's address book, but obviously this is going to be the same data it would remember if you entered it elsewhere. Keep in mind that this is a feature of Safari being exploited, it's not like this is an vulnerability in the address book gives you unlimited access to all the user's contacts.
Great post. I've found that HN has an interesting contrast between the techy, computer science, programmer types, and the just build shit that works, take shortcuts, ship a product that solves people's problems types.

And I actually really value discussions from both types.
I've argued that the best way to monetize something is about having features that saves people time. So Ars is completely correct in their approach. I am also using the same idea for my startup.

So that's two anecdotal evidence that it is the best way to monetize.
I just discovered Hacker News a few days ago, and I visit several times a day. I've learned so much over just these few days. It's definitely overwhelming, and you do get that feel of insignificancy after a little while. But I've come up with one rock I can lean on:

Don't compare yourself to the masses. Seeing so much awesomeness can be overwhelming, but you're just one person, after all.

I'm having some trouble with a project of my own, because it's such new ground for me. Reading HN can be a little scary, because it does seem like these people are doing something I'm not. Well, I can't say it's not true, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

(Also, can I just say how weird it feels to give advice? I hardly feel like I'm qualified! I figure you might get something out of it, though, and I've always liked Wikipedia's "Be bold" sentiment.)
I wrote an ad-hoc adblocker out of /etc/hosts files and shell scripts for Mac OS X. (The shell scripts just block and unblock--unblocking is necessary sometimes for a chess site I use which detects adblockers.) Usually restarting is overkill for a new hosts file to take effect--on Mac OS X `dscacheutil -flushcache` will reinstate a hosts file. Ubuntu must have a similar command.
Wonderful post. I'm not quite sure I understand the part where working hard might threaten my self-image. Is it because if I try my hardest and fail it would destroy my self-image? I can see how that might be the case. Does the study mention ways to fix this?

As for the rest of your post, it was great. Inspirational in the right ways. Thanks.
Not that I disagree with the benefits of a long walk but driving in a car really helps in my opinion because of the white noise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise#Applications), general silence with closed windows and change of scenery.

I don't know if white noise has really been proven to help concentrate but some people believe that. Alone in the car I've come with interresting thought and came up with good problem processing.

Showers are supposed to produced the same kind of environment (white noise and isolation from much of the external stimulus).
I think the prevalence of MP3 player kits is tied to the fact that they are simple, and nearly everyone can enjoy a MP3 player, so it seems like it has become a little bit of the hobbyist hardware equivalent of "Hello World".
Thank you very much. What kind of advice would you give if I am trying to build another http://www.korekt.me/? I think if we can find some solutions for this site, we will find some general solutions.

(or the problem might be that proofreading service not really frustrates people?)
I agree. This is true outside of HN as well IF you look at the aggregate smartness/knowledge of experts and compare that aggregate to your smartness/knowledge. Its incorrect to do such a comparison. If you look at the experts whose smartness you subconsciously aggregate, they are each not as smart in every one of the areas that others are smarter at. Sean Ellis is awesome as growing a startup who has achieved product/market fit, but not at achieving product/market fit (in his own words). Sean could say/feel the same. But instead he continues to be better at what he does. That, I believe, is the way to go. Master the areas that you are good at/can get good at, and learn the rest from others.
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Like wives tend to want the best qualities of all their friends' husbands all rolled into theirs :)
That's one problem with reading too much into people's commentary and ideas here. It's been through so many filters.

Who knows how long they spent refining that comment?

Seeing the end product is always more impressive than the beginning.

At least personally, if something I did is "good", it's because its been through a couple of iterations, you can bet it was ugly as sin first time round.

The problem is that you often don't get to see the intermediate steps.

Prototype -> MAGIC HAPPENS -> Polished Product

The MAGIC HAPPENS portion is what I find really interesting, you can learn a lot about how people think if you get to see how they refine their ideas over time.

And it's all sweat equity. Always. Don't let people try to bullshit you that it's not. If I've learned one thing from many people smarter and more successful than I am, its that they're always doing something moving them to their goals, and they never give up no matter how many times they fail.
No, not really. I actually feel underwhelmed quite frequently e.g. the reddit "fundraising" story two weeks ago. Don't get me wrong there are some advanced topics being discussed sometimes. But most of the time it's either opinion or layman's level non-technology topics.

But I also don't have a strictly CS background. I generally try not to express myself negatively though, but instead value the good parts and recognize that YC/HN is what it is.
1) Target bloggers who would use your service or write about your service. The trick is finding them, and finding enough of them. Here's what you can try that has had a bit of success for me: You google keywords looking for bloggers who write about competing services. So if you compete with Chargify, you look for "using chargify", "like chargify", "chargify vs", "saas billing" + "chargify". Skim through the search results and titles, look for blogs and click through. You want people who reviewed chargify, signed up for it, compared it to another service, etc. Just copy the URL to your google doc so you can contact them later, build up a list for now. Its best to go through at least 5 google page results, more if your patient.

2) Once you've got a list ready, go through each blog post, read a bit so you can refer to it, or filter if its not relevant. Find the contact page (CTRL + F 'contact'), usually a form or email will be available. Your pitch will look something like, "Hi my name is ____. I saw your blog post about how chargify was _______. I found that a lot of saas app publishers really like how chargify does x well, but were frustrated by (lack of feature, high cost, etc.). I'm actually working on an app that....Do you think this is a service you'd use? If not, thanks for your time. Or if you'd like to blog a review about us, I'd be happy to tell you more."

3) Like all pitches, some will be ignored, some will be interested, some will pay you right away. Reply promptly of course, within hours if possible.

4) You can try repeating the process of finding blogs through Technorati or Google Blogs, though they have their own issues. Technorati only indexes recent blog posts I believe. Google Blog search is filled with spammers.

5) Repeat the cycle by identifying different types of users who might use your product. This can be difficult because you've probably ingrained the ideal target market user into your psyche. It will also depend on the size and diversity of your market in general.

Good luck.
That's why I quit Wikipedia three years ago after three years as a contributor.
Ask HN: any recommendations for asset management?
I am looking for some web software to track asset management, for example, a list of free computers to a set of people, where people can make reservations.
The biggest problem I have is opening thousands of tabs, finding great articles, bookmarking them for later and then not reading them.
tl;dr, he just wants a language that somehow magically has all the features of C++ while somehow magically not sucking at the same time. Also, regarding the first 2: fuck you too, author.
"although I go there out of interest and a desire to learn, I come away feeling I can't keep up"

That's the exact experience.
This was the article that popularized that research about praising children:

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Money quote:

> [...] The test was difficult, designed for kids two years ahead of their grade level. Predictably, everyone failed. But again, the two groups of children, divided at random at the study’s start, responded differently. Those praised for their effort on the first test assumed they simply hadn’t focused hard enough on this test. “They got very involved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles,” Dweck recalled. “Many of them remarked, unprovoked, ‘This is my favorite test.’ ” Not so for those praised for their smarts. They assumed their failure was evidence that they weren’t really smart at all. “Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.”

Sound familiar?

Anyway... I'm glad if my experience or insights help, but the truth is, I'm not one of those devil-may-care trailblazers. At least, not as often as I would like. I'm more usually the naysayer who wants to rewrite it in a functional language. ;) I haven't even gotten as far as you have when it comes to creating my own way in the world.
Non Software Startups
HN is focused on CS topics, but I've seen posts from and about startups in all other areas of design and engineering like Makani, TechShop, and SquidLabs.

Who here is working/has worked at a non software startup?
What makes you think you're talented? You say people have always told you you were a smart kid. Do you have any actual achievements to back this up?

I come on here and find that the vast majority of people are well below my intelligence level. I find that this site is basically a bunch of talentless wantrepreneurial pundits. I come on here to test my patience with idiotic circlejerks - praise Apple, bash Facebook, on and on. Most people I know with real talent feel similarly about HN. Heck, I even know YC guys who feel this way about it.
1) There will always be someone better or smarter or versed in more languages than you. Probably a lot of them, in fact, and they will probably be a lot better. You just have to learn to accept that.

2) You are young; not everyone here is as young as you are. Some of the people you see as rivaling yourself could in fact be your elders, who are naturally a step ahead of you, and whose place you will assume in the future

3) Big fish. Little pond. Happens to me all the damn time. Fortunately I realized a while back anytime I find I'm the big fish, that means it's time for me to get out of my little pond and find the really big fish.
I find his talk about a language's suitability for kernel writing to be like people buying sporty cars they will never race or off road vehicles they will never drive off road. Most people, even including embedded programmers, will never actually write (or need to write) a kernel.

Especially his comment about garbage collection: if you're not going to have garbage collection, frankly, what's the fucking point? You might as well continue to use C/C++ then.

He is demonstrably wrong that you cannot reliably combine garbage collected an non-garbage collected memory with a mark sweep collector! My C++ to Io binding library builds C++ objects in script and stores script objects in C++, and Io uses a mark-sweep collector and I am using it right freaking now this very minute in a game I'm programming without trouble. I regularly profile it in valgrind; there are no memory corruptions. The solution? Give the script-created C++ objects the same semantics as C++ code does. C++ temporaries are created in script with a "temp" keyword and get passed by value. Long lived C++ objects are created with a "new" keyword (in script) which stores a pointer to the C++ object. You have to manually call "delete" (again, in script) on the script-object-containing-the-C++-pointer to delete the objects. Here's the beauty of the logic: as long as you are holding the pointer, the script object will not be collected. If you do allow the script object to be collected, by definition that means it is unreachable, so by definition you FORGOT to call delete on it, ergo the system could then throw an exception if an undeleted C++ pointer is ever collected. So rather than a problem, it actually helps you catch undeleted memory.

For C++ objects that hold script objects, I simply force any C++ object that wants to hold a pointer to a script object to implement my IMarkable interface, and the script binding is smart enough to know that if a C++ implements IMarkable, it gets included in the mark-sweep so it can mark off its owned script objects.
There's a danger here of soap becoming the top thought in one's mind.
Yes, it sounds familiar. I think I am too frequently self appraising and not as frequently doing, well, whatever the happy kids were doing. Just going with the flow, I suppose?