skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: What resources do you use for your market research?
I need data in regards to our market. A sampling of 1,000 people to various niche questions. I was wondering what creative ways others have used to gather data to present to angels and VCs? We are looking to do this on the cheap, as Google and libraries have failed us!

Things we have done or planning to do is...

1. We used a twitter search... summize.com, but Twitter's API only goes back 200 Tweets. It says total 2,000 tweets on topic, but only shows 200 :(

2. Ask friends who are pastors or teachers to ask a question here or there and do a head count.
Is anyone else tired of reading this crap? Why is everyone so concerned about making a list of things that "the perfect programmer" does?

On top of that, the "The perfect programmer delivers good software that meets client’s expectations."?! That is not what the "perfect programmer" does, that's what the average consulting company does. It's like saying "the perfect artist" delivers his graphics on time and on budget. What? That's just what Joe Average graphics designer does.

sigh
This dood wants a 'The Dip', it's even on my wish list! I'll mail it back, when I'm done or pass it on the same style your choice.
The biggest problem with hiring foreign contractors is not that they're foreign, but that the mindset required to hire them cannot attract good hackers. More specifically, the kind of people who decide to save money on development by hiring offshore contractors are usually the kind of people who think programmers are interchangeable parts and can't tell the difference between a good and bad developer.

But even if you are a hacker yourself and a good judge of programming talent, it's very hard for you to find good people when you are in a different continent. Think about how difficult it is to attract good talent right here in America. Even if you're in an area with a comparatively high concentration of talented programmers (let's say Silicon Valley), you will probably not find the best people by waiting for them to come to you. You have to get into the right circles, or get referrals from people you trust, or go to meetups like Startup School that attract the kind of people you want, etc. etc. Now what if you were thousands of miles away? Would you be able to do any of that? Maybe via websites like this or by collaborating on open source projects, but I doubt that those are the avenues by which companies are hiring foreign contractors.

I know of a few companies with solid offshore development operations that are staffed with very good people. In every single case, there was someone from the company on the ground in that country, finding and hiring people in the same way that the company would do in the states.
He may be arrogant, I don't mind. His points are not minor; the choice whether to grow organically or try to make it big on steroids (funding) is a very important one.

I saw almost all of your comments recently have been dedicated to dhh. Most have been heavily downmodded. It's obvious the community here likes what dhh says, why not just ignore him if you don't like him? Hey, I do that with pbs.org, valleywag and Matt Maroon without the need for any software! The point of such software is in arguing what to put in the defaults.
Apple Crisp Recipe
Easy apple crisp recipe.
I see words but they don't parse into anything I can understand.
Why not just get a job where you're allowed to use Twitter? If you don't like the policy, take your brain elsewhere.

And also, twittering-mode.el (for emacs) looks very much like work :)
What closed source software do you see "really pushing the boundaries"?
It's still there. AT&T probably just wants to justify a tiny dip in revenues when they have to start turning it on. Of course, they'll probably end up making money -- more bandwidth required, more money to AT&T. So wait... I'm actually not sure why they would complain.
Wait, but now you have to work for AOL :)
Snarfbot, a new way to search. It allows you to easily compare results from multiple search engines at once without altering or reinterpreting the results. Create custom search tabs and tab groups that you can share with your friends and colleagues.

http://www.snarfbot.com
in early alpha, but mostly works :)

Still working on the pitch... Not sure how to word the last line, it doesn't make much sense until you have used the site which is likely a bad thing. I am open to suggestions...
I wouldn't mind one to summarize for http://squeezedbooks.com
I was merely pointing out the humor in the fact that whenever one says, "Premature optimization is the root of all evil", there will be a large number of people who spring to the defense of premature optimization. I wasn't picking on your post in particular...just the amusing fact that an off-the-cuff comment that didn't really express my intentions very well was the one sentence that got a very vocal response from several people, and yours was the first (and actually the post that signaled for the Premature Optimization Defense League).

It's a failing on my part for even bringing up premature optimization at all, particularly if I wanted to discuss anything other than premature optimization (or evil). I've been programming for over 20 years...I should have known what would happen.
Umm...Isn't the source available in the examples included with arc?
You can do polls on Facebook for as low as 5 cents a vote and you can target based on facebook profile information.
Looks like Seth Godin already posted a summary ebook free online.

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3776726/Pushing_Past_the_Dip_How...(PDF)(M

(copy and paste link)
Knuth is solving different problems than Joe Average programmer.

I don't think anyone will argue against reusing existing databases, web frameworks, etc. when you are writing a web app. But if you are, say, writing a new typesetting system... who cares about reusability? You just need to make it work. The components aren't typically used elsewhere in that case, so your priority should be writing a good typesetting system, not writing reusable parts.

I think that's what he's saying, anyway...
Shrimp Scampi
Shrimp scampi recipe
Actually, no. 'Venir' in French is 'to come' in English, not 'to go' - hence we see words like 'devenir' (='to become') and 'bienvenue' (='welcome')
Dept of Homeland Security website hacked
does Rosetta stone employ something similar?
Thanks! We need a YC'er of the week award :)
" ... that might well be because I’m a very strange person"

I completely agree he does sound like a very strange person, some of his opinions are not what you would expect from a person in stature, to the degree that made me doubt the integrity of this interview

If people didnt know he was Don Knuth he would have been easily acused of being a troll

He also sound like a very opinionated and passionate person
Explaining the semantic web [Google docs presentation]
The software on Wii and iPhone (which I know has open source components), come to mind immediately as two that are insanely popular and could never even be approached by open source projects.

I don't mean that open source is bad. I don't hate open source stuff. I like it. Another open source project I like a lot is the music stuff for monome.org and their boxes.

But the article said "Is closed sourcing inevitable? I sure hope not. But, we’ll see it play out one way or another over the next couple of years." which is a ridiculous thing to say. That's like saying "Is the sun rising inevitable? Tune in next year."

People who think closed source software might die to open source are like people who think that this week Giligan and crew might really get off the island.
Despite all of Woz's technical achievements I think his greatest achievement is remaining a genuine free spirit. Maybe he took more from the Hippy movement then a lot of the hippie's around him back in the day.
I'll have to ask my cofounder - we spent a lot of time debating the font, but I never asked for the name. Glad you liked it.
In my personal experience, I haven't come across a non-US trained programmer who lives up to my expectations.

One thing that I see frequently and deeply disturbs me is a trait I've seen among nearly all of the SE Asian and Indian developers I've met: they won't think for themselves.

I don't mean that they can't solve problems. No, they can eventually produce something that fits the bill most of the time. Rather, there is a deep-rooted cultural mindset that is dead-set against exploratory learning. It's a respect thing. Knowledge is considered something that is passed down to you from someone who is elder/wiser.

Americans, on the other hand, are very much geared towards asking questions and exploring them on their own. For example: an American student might not think twice about questioning what a teacher in school is saying. For an Indian student that is absolutely out of the question.

Maybe? Dunno? Just a thought.

P.S. This also explains "plz send me the codes" syndrome, where people flood a message board or blog with a similar plea and their email address.
I'm really skeptical that there's a causal relationship between dropping out and subsequently becoming a billionaire, or otherwise very wealthy. There may be a correlation (both require independent thinking, etc.), but I think most of those billionaires would have been as successful or even more so if they'd have spent the time to finish school.

And looking at a handful of examples of billionaire dropouts and then generalizing more broadly is pretty silly: that is pure selection bias. You could also look at the set of billionaires who are, say, born in June and draw similar conclusions. Either way, you're ignoring the vast number of common cases in favor of a few spectacular exceptions.
I love the department of homeland security and absolutely do not think they are a disgusting combination of outright frauds, incompetent hucksters, evil masterminds and racist assholes who have done almost nothing to make us secure but have done a lot to spread fear, make peoples lives suck, and encourage people to be scared shitless of anything unexpected.

It's atrocious that someone would assault the vaterlan...er...American homeland. Ve..we should immediately raise the threat level to maroon (bright maroon, not dark) and start 2 minute hates of the unspecified hackers immediately. The americans will just transfer the hate to whoever our benevolent media says, like after kennedy or king or lennon got shot. Let's catch these bastards now so we can maintain some pride.

If it's too hard to catch the hackers, just tell us how many ribbons we should buy to stick on the SUV's we paid for with the appreciation on our house with a sub-prime mortgage, and we'll give you hardworking guys all the support you need. If ribbons ain't enough to protect america against all the standing armies waiting to invade us, I know a kid down the street who might know as much about security as you guys and could help you out.
I look at medical journals with the demographic information we need. Then we ask people who could benefit from our tech and we ask them to try it and watch them use it and ask them to give us feedback.

Do you really care what 1,000 idiots on facebook (or 1,000 yahoos from anywhere on earth) with nothing to do but answer your shitty poll think?

Do you really want to work with a firm for whom a poll of a bunch of yahoos, a quarter of whom were statistically likely to be watching porn as they filled out your poll, was the thing that got you over?

Twitter is market research? There isn't a better way?
MachineEnglish - a (self-)reflective subset of English which allows computers and robots to describe themselves by explaining their algorithm(s) to their users in natural language. Human-machine dialogue can include, but isn't limited to, the machine answering what, how, and why it's doing what it's doing while it is doing it. If I don't have to spend too much time working for rent and ramen money, the prototype will come online this Christmas.

(Disclaimer: No, I did't solve Artificial General Intelligence, nor did I do something equally "magical". I'm not trying to compete for <a href="http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html">Hugh Loebner's gold medal</a>. I'll never be able to simulate a human brain which can explain its own workings. A human brain which could write such a simulation would have to be able to describe itself, which mine can't. A machine's "brain", however, can be much simpler, and the information about how it works usually does exist. The difficult thing is in encoding it so that it can be queried and used in coherent conversation. That's what I'm hacking on.)
Step nine: Spend all the time you would of spent at goal-setting-guide.com doing something useful.

If you have some real obstacle to doing the shit you want, bite the bullet and go see a real shrink. There is no shame in it (for someone as crazy as you) no one thought you were sane anyway, and the people in your life will probably take up a collection.

Otherwise, get your work done. Bullet points telling you what to do to overcome fear are never going to be the thing that works. Never. I don't understand this self help crap. It's all bullshit. You don't need to overcome your fear of failure to get your shit done. All you need to do to get your shit done is get your shit done. To me, this self help shit is like spinning your tires when your stuck in mud, it just traps you more.

You think people who succeed have overcome their fear of failure? Fuck no. You don't need to be happy or self actualize or overcome your fear of failure or go on a vision quest to find your spirit platypus or deal with your repressed anger from childhood to start. You just start.

Also, for people who don't tend towards depression, twenty minutes of meditation a day is going to be more helpful then reading every self help blog.
If you don't learn a single new thing, why don't you just continue school and do your business enadeavors at the same time. You should have plenty of time?
Good luck with it. That would be a Google killer.
Great idea!
http://friendfeed.com/talkeinan
Feel free to follow me as well...
Opera Features that will get anyone hooked
"Yet I think that a few programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, will always be superior to competitors like the Gimp—for some reason, I really don’t know why!"

See, that's what a name like The Gimp does. Even smart people will believe your product is inferior - backed-up by no real argument what so ever ;)
A troll?!

I rarely hear people describe their ideas with as much self reflection as Knuth in this interview.
Zucchini Bread Recipe
Classic Zucchini Bread Recipe
Ask YC: Where to startup? (If not the US, then Canada or UK?)
Given all the recent confusion and criticism of the US immigration fuc^Wpolicies, I'm wondering what everyone thinks is the best place outside the US to startup, and why?

I know there's a pretty strong startup scene now in Canada and parts of Europe but if you were starting out, which would you prefer? The following reasons are based on my VERY limited understanding and experience with both these places, so feel free to correct, etc.

Vancouver, BC

Pros: Proximity to Seattle/Silicon Valley, good startup/entrepreneurial scene

Cons: Bad weather, Bureaucracy, VCs are more risk-averse compare to SV, labor laws

London, UK

Pros: Burgeoning startup scene, situated mid-way between continental US and Europe (not sure why this is a pro), tech friendly VCs

Cons: Bad weather, labor laws, expensive (!!)

Any other places to consider?
Now Wikipedia has an API
Who Needs Another Social Network?
Apple’s PA Semi buyout: A defensive move?
Google indexes the internet, twitter indexes twitter. Which do you think will provide a more useful data set for marketing research?

Heck of all the people I know I can't think of a single person that uses twitter. However I can think of a dozen or two that have written product/service reviews somewhere on the internet, which would be indexed by Google.
Voluminous: Finding Public Domain Books
Anybody actually use this yet?

It's a commercial app for OS X for finding, downloading, managing, and reading public domain books.
Time's up for Yahoo; what will Microsoft do next?
Another perspective: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/04/24/why-did-apple-buy-p...
SSLShopper
Site for helping to find and share information (FAQ, reviews, etc.) about SSL certificates and CAs.
The Halcyon Days of Entrepreneurship
Summary for this: Be open minded because close minded people are assholes.
something like http://www.fixmystreet.com ?
?!... french is actually my first language. I understand what you're saying, but I seriously always pictured "en venir à" as going to somewhere from the perspective of the person that's moving, never as someone coming from somewhere from the perspective of the... goal? This is confusing...

edit: I think I understand why I picture them as opposite idioms: "I see where you're coming from" seems to refer to the past, like for example if you ask someone from where he's (litterally) coming from (ex: what country?), you're asking where he was before. Whereas "je vois où tu veux en venir" seems to refer to the future, you're talking about where he wants to be... See what I'm saying?
well I (here in US) finally found a co-founder (which I hope turns out to be a good decision) in the UK. I'm not sure how we're going to make it work, but I think on advantage may be that if he gets venture capital in the UK it's worth ~twice as much if I spend it here.
"The biggest problem with hiring foreign contractors is not that they're foreign, but that the mindset required to hire them cannot attract good hackers. More specifically, the kind of people who decide to save money on development by hiring offshore contractors are usually the kind of people who think programmers are interchangeable parts and can't tell the difference between a good and bad developer."

As someone who lives and works in Bangalore, India, I can confirm this.
Great programmers in Ruby (or any other language) are just as rare here as anywhere else.

They have a distinct aversion to these "we have done the core work now you clean up / tweak the code at 20$/hr" offers. Someone who is really good at programming can work at google/yahoo/amazon or found a startup. Why should she work at 20 $ / hr for clowns like the author of this post?

"But even if you are a hacker yourself and a good judge of programming talent, it's very hard for you to find good people when you are in a different continent. Think about how difficult it is to attract good talent right here in America. Even if you're in an area with a comparatively high concentration of talented programmers (let's say Silicon Valley), you will probably not find the best people by waiting for them to come to you. You have to get into the right circles, or get referrals from people you trust, or go to meetups like Startup School that attract the kind of people you want, etc. etc. Now what if you were thousands of miles away?"

This is exactly true. The only way to find good hackers in India (or Argentina for that matter) is to know good people on the ground before you start your search. And how many people in the United States are in a position to do that?

Here is a hint for people who insist on hiring offshore resources "blind". Ask for evidence of open source projects or contributions. This immediately eliminates the riffraff who swarm during a boom (and the software industry is booming in Bangalore). Every decent programmer I know in Bangalore has or contributes to an open source project.

Ask to see a blog so you can judge written communication skills. Every good programmer I know has a blog.

Once you've done all this, make sure you have interesting work to offer. When you outsource garbage work you get roaches. Why are you surprised at this?

My 2 rupees.
Games aren't really about the software; they're about the storyline and graphics. Writers and artists aren't quite as into the open source stuff yet, so it makes sense that there aren't a lot of open source games. But the engine stuff has been done, and the open source games that do exist have interesting engines. Quake, for example.
For Twitter, try our tools:

http://twist.flaptor.com
http://twittersearch.flaptor.com

And please let us know if you have any feature suggestions. We are trying to build a useful tool so we are all ears.
Switzerland!!!
Strongly considering Argentina.

Pros: No work visa required. Affordable lifestyle (eating out, tango clubs, outdoor events, music). Cost of living fairly low ($10k/yr reasonable living burn rate), Buenos Aires one of the world's largest metropolitan areas. Burgeoning expatriate population (pro or con, depending).

Cons: Distance from family and friends (but some have said they'd love to visit!). Distance from established networks. Virtual business dealings. You need to learn another language to effectively be part of the community (not a programming one, a real language, Spanish and maybe their local hybrid).
It really depends on what you mean by "school." There's an almost incomparable qualitative difference between Stanford (or Harvard, my alma mater) and your local community college, if you're talking about a CS degree.

But college these days is pretty much a waste of time, except as a trade school (even Stanford or Harvard, to be brutally realistic). Everything else has been so compromised by the everything-is-relative PC mush-heads that it's not worth even $50/credit, much less nearly $2,000 at the big-name schools.
Yup, this looks like what you want.

"Micro-Payments Support: With Amazon FPS you can track and aggregate micro-payments (e.g. payments less than $0.50 or even $0.01) into a single payment transaction"
Surgeon General's note: This thread is a good source of Vitamin C.
Ranking on stories/comments is not based on karma of the poster, but on how quickly a particular comment/story has been voted up.

But yeah, go check out the code.
The easy way around this problem is to be aware of the value of your time. If it takes you another ten minutes to save 1-2 dollars and it feels like a chore, then it's obviously a bad deal.

Of course, your time isn't always worth the same. You may find yourself on a Sunday morning with time to burn (or retired/unemployed), in which case you might as well look for a better deal as a matter of principle. It also may be the case that going out of your way is enjoyable for other reasons and doesn't feel like a chore.

It's all about being aware of how the price you pay for anything is composed of many variables (time, money, sacrifices, etc) whose relative values are constantly readjusting.
i would like my "address" to move to the location of a massive scanner than can scan and email me all data. then my spam filter can catch, the snail mail spam, and all of my mail gets shredded and recycled.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=129037
Who cares where you startup? Some of the best startups have come from non-startup towns, like Shopify.com from Ottawa

But to support the topic, here's some cities in eastern Canada where I think the startup culture is growing/swell:

- Toronto, Ontario

Pros: Great community, lots of get togethers and Barcamps. Good overall scene

Cons: Crappy weather, rent and space costs are high.

- Waterloo, Ontario

Pros: Good community (Been to several Startup meets), a lot of younger people (It's a town with two major Universities in it plus a college) and a lot of cool more tech-oriented startups coming out of it. Cost of living is pretty cheap, nice small town. Lots of VC's in the area from what I've seen

Cons: Perhaps a bit TOO small of a town (Only 90,000 people)

- Montreal, Ontario

Pros: Great european culture in the city itself. Awesome startup scene with lots of get togethers. Great technology and apps coming out of it already. Lots of people deeming Montreal the "Silicon Valley of Canada" (And yes, I know it can't compare AT ALL). Pretty cheap considering how big it is

Cons: The city itself may not be for some people. Very busy.

Hope that helps. Go Canada startups! :-)
Speaking of incompetent programmers... I'm clicking on the comments link on his page and nothing is happening (unless I hit refresh of course :)).