skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was not meaning to call you a fanboy directly, although I guess by your own admission you do fit the description.

I care about the consequences of my actions as well (or at least some actions, I am not to be held responsible when beer is involved), but free software != the absolute answer for everything. Do you not believe that everyone deserves to be paid for their work? Paying for software creates a cash flow for the company, which can be used to fund development, maintenance and enhancements. Some companies use that cash flow (IMO) in better ways than others, and that factors in to how I make my choices.
Frankly, when people move from Macs to Linux, or Mac to PC, or Linux to PC, they generally dislike it at first. All the shortcuts and techniques you've internalized are thrown out the window, so it feels awkward and slow. I read about this effect at one point, but I don't remember where...
This is a great example of a major benefit of extending human life: Having people that have witnessed history to guide us through future problems.
Windows XP and the importance of listening to customers
"I object to Microsoft's plan, not because Vista is so awful, but rather, because ignoring customers is so wrong."
I'm not sure about the other frameworks listed but I did notice the following related to Django:

- Django's caching supports ram, disk, database, and memcache as well.
- Migrations are supported in Django via the 3rd party django_evolution to name one of a few.
- Django trunk also has simplejson included.
- For documentation there are the online docs, the djangobook.com website, three published books as of today, and at least a few other books coming out in the next few months. My point just being that there is more then just one book.
assuming that a 19-year-old in a dormroom with two or three friends created Facebook, why does it matter what the status of 56 nations/territories are if only two or three single-minded hackers create something people want?

if there is enough infrastructure for any African bloggers or hackers, then there is enough to create a "Google, Facebook, or Microsoft"

why can't an African "make something people want?" (I didn't realize this was location dependent)
How To Become A Good Theoretical Physicist
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175185
Just trying to make lemonade out of lemons.
$1.9million for gaming that does good
VCs Doubling Down on Winners
A physicist on the "Lessig style"
I often say that starting to smoke was my lucky break career wise.

When I got my first IT job it was a very low level help desk job with a big 3 consultancy. I smoked though so I was often in the smoking lounge/smoking area with the other smokers and we would naturally chat. This chatting/familiarity got my name around enough that I was able to get extra chances to move ahead and was out of the call centre and into a development job in no time at all.

I did finally quit though. Now I got for the smoke breaks I just leave the smokes out of it. I get the same benefit with only having to risk second hand smoke a couple times a day.
Video of Winning Presentation at Web 2 Launch Pad
From the article:

(Of course, the left-alignment guideline is for languages that read left-to-right. For languages that read in the opposite direction, the guideline is reversed: you should right-justify the menu. In either case, the point is to make it easier for users to scan down the side on which they start reading.)
I'm surprised a usability test is such big news. It's almost as though no one ever thought to do one for Linux before.
How many products make up a project?
If you had to choose between succeeding and finding the love of your life, which would you choose and why?
"Imagine ... seeing a deposit of $10 million - right after you’ve been acquired or sold all your shares.
[...]
OK, now imagine you’ve done the things on your list. How do you feel. Any happier? ... I’d be willing to bet that you won’t actually feel much happier than you do now. You might feel nice for about two months, and then you’ll be itching to do something else.
Happiness isn’t found in being the next company to sell for $100 million. So that’s the whole point - you can have a small web app business and still enjoy the good life."

I don't think I'll ever be able to see eye to eye with the people who put forward this kind of argument. Maybe we're talking about different things, or maybe we just see life differently. Maybe it's a lack of imagination, I don't know.

The $100 million, or 10, or even 1, isn't about the number of zeroes in your bank account, it's about freedom. Freedom to scratch my "itch to do something else". With the money, that can be bumming around and travelling, or it can be creating something I enjoy but which is very unlikely to ever pay the rent, or it can be trying to start a second $100 million company, or it can be "a small web app business". Without the money and with a small web app business, it can be... a small web app business.

In other words, running a small web app business is all you need to be happy, as long as what you need to be happy is running a small web app business.
On the other hand, suppose Microsoft then raises its bid
to $33/share, and then News Corp. holds its bid at
$32/share. Could Yahoo's board still take News Corp.'s
bid in preference to Microsoft's? In a word: no. When a
board is presented with multiple offers, it can either
take the highest objective offer or it can turn down all
the offers. It cannot take an offer lower than the
highest objective offer.

That makes absolutely no sense to me -- the board should have the ability to discriminate among offers on factors beyond the mere acquisition price. Suppose there is an insignificant difference in price between two offers, but one of the offers makes more strategic sense -- in terms of how the new company will align with the buyer's current interests and assets, the buyer's long-term proposed strategy, the strength of their management team, the buyer's financial condition, etc. Forcing the board to choose the higher offer seems remarkably short-sighted: shouldn't the board be concerned with maximizing long-term shareholder value?
The Indians are coming
These may be huge multinationals now, but they were not so at the beginning. I guess the question of "can they produce companies" is really (at least) 2 questions: the one pertaining to the initial creation itself of something like a Google, the other to surviving long enough and growing to become what something like Google is today.

Arguably surviving and growing is "cheaper" in the USA than Africa -- but that doesn't make it impossible in Africa.

I don't know that the "huge multinational" argument to sustaining growth, really holds water. By definition, a multinational has to rely on talent pools in multiple countries -- so does it really matter then where the multinational originated?

Consider eg Naspers (mentioned elsewhere) which is a multinational in various of its interests, such as internet access, mobile phone networks and Pay TV. In fact, last time I looked (which was 5 yrs ago), their Pay TV interests was the fastest growing pay TV operation in the world, with interests everywhere including the USA (in fact it owned OpenTV for a while there, which it sold prior to embedded linux getting a foothold).

An interesting comment from a gent at Naspers to me once, was that their experience with operating in the USA suggested that if Africans attempt to open offices / businesses there directly, this tends not to work nearly as well as purchasing an American company and essentially creating the impression to the casual observer that the business is in fact American.
Bertrand Russell: In praise of idleness (1932)
I don't develop any sort of web framework or toolkit, so I have no idea which package you mean. I just don't see web2py being extracted from a large successful project, which I think is a partial recipe for success. I'm especially confused, because it's an "enterprise framework", but grown in a university.

We already have a full stack web framework with an insane amount of documentation - Django, and I would bet my money on its continued evolution and 1.0 release. If anyone is on the fence, look at the web2py/gluon source code and ask if that's the sort of full stack you see being maintained by a community.
It's worth noting that due to the separation of pro- options it appears like the board is divided down the center when, in reality, more than 2 out of 3 voters (about 68%) are in favor of Scribd support!
Names are out there, but you just have to be a bit more creative about picking them. You also need to be a bit more flexible about what you're willing to accept in having a domain that 'has bad spelling' or other quirks.
Marissa Mayer interviewed by Michael Krasny on KQED Forum [mp3]
Morgan Stanley’s March Internet Trends Report: Social Applications Dominating
Why doesn't Microsoft out-innovate Apple?
At the risk of being flamed, I want to state that I think GIMP is worse. I have no objective evidence, though; it's all subjective and anecdotal.

I started with Paint Shop Pro, and what it lacked in features it made up in ease-of-use. I especially liked the ability to mix raster and vector layers; Photoshop still hasn't captured the simplicity and power of PSP's vector layers, IMO (in terms of UI, at least). After I used PSP, I moved on to Photoshop. While it was initially a bit intimidating, my familiarity with PSP quickly helped me overcome this and I was up to speed pretty fast. Fast forward a long time and I try Corel Painter. Its interface is definitely different, but still easy to follow. I picked it up in a few minutes (for some definition of 'picked up').

Then I tried GIMP. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and I never got used to it. I can't explain why GIMP doesn't work for me; just that I didn't -- couldn't -- pick it up like I did Photoshop or Painter (or openCanvas for that matter).
Interesting bits:
1. Genesis of Don't Be Evil
2. GMail/Privacy
3. 1-800-GOOG-411 as a speech recognition AI lab
4. The Google Jet
Xobni’s Secret Project: Merge Outlook With Yahoo Mail
Every hour spent developing these features is an hour not-spent developing real features that differentiate your application from its competitors.

Besides, if the features are so easy to implement, surely you have a patch ready for submission.
This devalues a designers time and labor. This is HORRIBLE, and no designer or programmer should stand behind it.
Anyone know what a "presentation deck" is?

He says it's the most important thing it the world to have for a talk you give, but it's the first I've heard of it...
Quite true really - but since I am rather new and ignorant to the various language religiosity, it's good to know that Java is indeed a very versatile language, but, only if used for the right job. Yes, quite true that many complaints arise from using the wrong weapon indeed. I just felt for the moment that Django seemed to be a rifle and java, a shotgun.
NYTimes hand codes their HTML
Delivering useful software
3 Options for Rebuilding Your Software Without Risking Death
Disqus: Support Via Twitter Works
Is Open Source Software Really Good For Business?
Yes, or press the PlayStation button that allows you to exit any game at any time.
My son is 8, my daughter is 6, and I sleep in the easy chair in the living room when I talk about childbirth as if I knew what it was like.
only if they read it
The book is symmetrical but the writing - hence, pages - proceed from left to right. It's most evident when using the thumbs to flip through a book or magazine. Being left-handed as well, I always flip through magazines backwards.
I love this already - just the right mix of examples and agile learning. Perfect! Thanks!
piss off? arbitrary on a per-post, per-client basis. come off like you have too little to say about too much? definitely.
How Much Is Twitter Worth?
Wrong, every hour that helps fix a show stopper bug for 90% of people is better than implementing a new feature for 10% or less of the people. If something you did every day didn't work under Ubuntu you wouldn't switch. If something that Windows didn't have, didn't exist in Ubuntu either, you wouldn't notice. A lot of these are not simple fixes either, you are not going to change the DVD codec legality with an hour of hacking. Most of the remaining sticky issues seem to be either polishing some things off or legal/commercial reasons. You'd think with Dell getting behind Ubuntu more would have changed, but so far not so much.
That would be a "deck of slides." Nowadays it's a keynote, open office, or that-other-thing file, but once upon a time it was a set of 35mm transparencies you would load into a carousel.

Stacked up, they looked a little like a deck of cards, thus the nickname "deck." You can probably find one (and someone old enough to remember when they were called decks) in a museum somewhere.
Check out these new financial startups I’ll be meeting tomorrow
It's a slideshow.
And so do all professional Web designers. It's not a big deal.
That kind tend to be more forgettable precisely because there are so many combinations of words. For example, it's been a decade or so and I still don't remember if a given office supply store is Office Max or Office Depot. But I do know if it's a Staples or not.
ivan, have you actually used it yourself? What did you like/dislike about it? Can you gives us examples?

I personally don't like Django that much as it might be an overkill, and I kinda liked web.py, but the documentation is so poor and it misses a lot of features from a proper framework. Maybe web2py is the middle ground, and I will give it a look.

Dissmissing something, b/c its source codestyle is not pythonic enough for you, is a pretty shallow argument.
That's what 37signals does: basecamphq.com, backpackit.com, highrisehq.com, campfirenow.com
We have a number of founder interviews up at http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/category/founder-story/

I checked your profile but I can't determine your website, where will the interviews be posted?
I've used http://pickydomains.com a few times. You pay $50 and provide information on what you're looking for (names you like, etc.). They brainstorm names. If they find one you like, they keep the money. Otherwise, they refund it. We used them when brainstorming Tumblon (http://tumblon.com) and Zencoder (http://zencoder.tv). In both cases, they didn't come up with the final name we used, but they came close and gave us some inspiration for our final name. Most of the suggestions aren't any good, but when you get 100+ suggestions, a few are usually worthwhile.
A simple check against Photobox's revenue shows £8.1mn in 2006, as officially filed in the UK at Companies House. That's about $16mn revenue - nowhere near the $100mn quoted.

Also shows Graham Hobson as CEO, now it is Stanislas Laurent, as of 11/07.

Are the other 'estimates' not similarly verifiable? Where do they get their data?
As a programmer I can't imagine not having a preference for OSS. Open source allows me to learn from the authors, to locate and fix bugs (if it's a low priority bug that the authors won't get to for a while), to compile the software on the platforms I choose and to better understand the way an application works (beats reading the documentation sometimes).

Even if the software is paid I would still prefer to get the source code in addition the binary when I purchase it. Because of this bias I'm willing to put up with the slight inconveniences of using free alternatives.
Mint is an attempt to improve Ubuntu with a somewhat-friendlier UI and software that people actually use, i.e. mplayer. I think Ubuntu's problem isn't geekiness so much as ideology (and maybe there are legal issues with including things like codecs that i'm not aware of). Anyway computer-literacy isn't exactly on the downswing, so the trend is in FOSS's favor.
Out of all the people complaining about why Gimp is not like Photoshop I wonder how many actually paid $650 dollars for Photoshop. Look at it this way, if you spend 3 hours reading the Gimp manual instead of buying Photoshop you're essentially "earning" $200+/hour. For $650 I'm willing to put up with Gimp the few times I need to touch up an image.
I wasn't advocating web.py - emulating its style was just an example of Werkzeug's flexibility. I recommend Django if it fits your application, or rolling your own stack (Werkzeug) if Django doesn't fit. I haven't used web2py because I don't invest time in things I have zero faith in.

Edit: full disclosure: I've written code far worse than this (in some ways). I just don't publicly release it and encourage language newbies to build on it.
Ok, so it's kind of cool as a demonstration of programming skill, but I have to ask why. Is there that much existing Java code that people want to run inside web pages using Javascript? Are there that many people who would rather develop using Java instead of Javascript plus a library that abstracts away the browser differences?
Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.
The question is just an example, the underlying subtle notion is that what can an entrepreneur cook up with limited resources? Of course, you can ask them an intelligent question in any variety of ways - you can ask Jobs what can Apple design that solves audio learning problems in the third world for less than 20$ or so? Can Steve Jobs answer that question? Yes. Can he (or Apple rather) build it? Yes (well, in an interview you would ask a question that requires quite a bit of insight, not puzzles)

"This sounds like one of those textbook/puzzle questions which sound very clever but don't stand up to any rigorous analysis( imo)."

Again, it was an example. One could very well ask someone an on-the-spot question that would arise in a typical startup situation.

Answering the question "well" - if you are basing a hire's success just on the outcome of a question, then you may have some serious issues with measuring success.
Well, it could be easier. I had to try three or four different approaches that I found on messageboards before I found one that worked. In the end, I had to enable a few new repositories, download a few new plug-ins, modules, and etc., and change the back-end software on my movie-player (Who knew that movie-players had back-ends? I didn't!).
If you define success as founding the next Google then the overwhelming majority of readers on HN will be unsuccessful. The number of "Google class" firms in Silicon Valley is perhaps a dozen in the last two decades. It's akin to defining successful as winning the lottery, because, let's face it, they were as lucky as they were smart.
You sure that wasn't leaked "on purpose"?
OK so there's been some discussion here on the second sentence ("can they produce..."), but maybe its also worth zooming in on the first sentence: are there hackers in africa and other 3rd world countries?

Here is an article from the IEEE Spectrum, titled "The African Hacker":
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug05/1699
Theoretically, except you can't force a private company to sell, unlike one that has gone public.
I just found myself, an avid vim fan, reading that whole thing to the end for some reason. Stevey got me again! :)
Rails Kits: Software as a Service Made Easy
"Google has a dual-class share structure that gives Larry Page, Sergey
Brin, and Eric Schmidt de facto total control over the company, and
investors certainly haven't avoided Google's stock as a result.

Yahoo does not have a dual-class share structure, and it's too late to put
one into place now.

If Yahoo did have a dual-class share structure, Yahoo's cofounders would
have been much better situated to block Microsoft from attempting a
takeover.

You can bet that this is being noticed by the founders of every technology
company that might go public from here on out."

Does YC structure things this way?
PragDave: Shoulda used this earlier
BooRah: Semantic aggregator of restaurant reviews
As the number of measurable work metrics increases, it becomes (roughly) exponentially more difficult to assess employee net value. If we can triangulate this measured value, we still may have immeasurable metrics--which will always break the formula. To the extent compensation is tied to immeasurable quantities, all employees should resent the system as unfairly hackable.

Some work systems are possible to measure and thus compensation may be formulaic and (roughly) just. For example, if I offered you a monetary reward to enter a boolean into a form, you either do the work (by entering a 1 or 0) or you don't. With Mechanical Turk, I can design complex algorithms with failsafe controls that will objectively assess and reward worker value. To the degree I can describe real-world problems and automate inputs and outputs, I can build an efficient and viable organization. Is a fair, transparent system intrinsically "happier"? I am not sure, but I do know the wealth creation potential here is massive.
Given that Matt Brezina submitted this, I would say 100% yes.
Examples? There are plenty of incompetent doctors, and that's about as high a bar as there is.
First Psystar Mac Clones Ship
Innovation takes more than deep pockets...
Also I don't quite get his desire to "live in" some giant all-in-one software package. I think it should be obvious now that Unix philosophy of many little specialized tools proved to be more flexible than uber-environments.

I am not sure if anybody here remembers, but back in the early 90 people believed that "future belongs to integrated environments", that's right - to IDEs and not just for programming. And now he's talking same thing again.

For those working for a web-services company (or living in SV these days) it may be natural to think that "everything is in the browser".

But is it? I still can hear PG's voice from Startup School in my ears: "Stop using the Internet please, my presentation won't open!"
Finally! An article with some real meat to it! I wish more others were like it.
Can't wait for the Gmail leak.
I wouldn't even say building Google was that hard -- wasn't it mostly done by Larry Page to start with?
The shareholders are getting paid right now. That is their long term value. Microsoft buys Yahoo, shareholders get a 50% premium on the value of their shares cash.

Like he says, if part of the offer is in stock, you can use long term projections of the value of that stock as part of the valuation. But it's unlikely Microsoft stock will fall greatly any time soon.
After meeting with Daniel and Jason, they are just outright on the ball. Good job on winning the war one blogger at a time.
Sure, but I don't know that I'd characterize the lack of tool-tip bubbles as a show-stopping bug.
I'm old enough to have presented from transparencies on an overhead projector, though I've never had occasion to present using an actual slide carousel.

BTW, I'm not sure I understand why you think it's so important to present with a Powerpoint (or similar). I tend to think Powerpoints get overused, and I often like to present working just from notes (3x5 cards, since I'm bad at memorizing) or from a demo when appropriate.

What's the win of working with a deck, in your view?
Looks like someone listened to Arrington at startup school :)
What Would Chuang Tzu Do?
Speaking from experience, innovation is VERY difficult to achieve from within the Microsoft organization. It's not impossible. It's just hard. Microsoft is a collection of loosely related fiefdoms linked at the VP level, which is easily 8 or more reporting levels above the normal joe level of software engineers and PM's. You need to have the ear of some very important people to get things done, which just probably won't happen for most.

Innovative organizations seem to be of two types: a) top down design leadership like Apple, or more likely b) bottom up environment that allows innovation to happen organically. SteveB and most of the VP's don't have the product design gifts Steve Jobs has, so A is out of the question. Unfortunately, Microsoft is so large and un-agile that B is impossible as well.