skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I recently ripped standard accounts out of my web app and put in OpenID support with the ability to assign a password optionally in case all your OpenID providers magically go down at once. I'm very sold on some kind of login/password non-proliferation treaty and the general idea behind stopping the DRY nonsense around avatars, favorite books, favorite movies, quotes, yada yada.

I have two problems with OpenID. First, big service providers seem to be offering OpenID but not allowing you to use it on their site. I know the market reason behind this, but that's just disrespectful to users. Until they change this, I don't see it getting enough exposure to convince non-early-adopting mid-tier or low-end sites that they should support it as well.

Second, OpenID doesn't seem to really carry any of that other repetitive profile data with it and only solves the username/password situation. Until more value can be achieved, it seems like finding a good username and trying to sign up for new services before someone takes it isn't that bad.

I just don't see OpenID making it yet. I was hoping Clickpass would make some headway, but that definitely hasn't made it out of the technical circle and I don't see their list of supported sites increasing these past few months which makes me nervous. I also find OpenID hard to explain to people who are actually smart and fairly technical. It seems to fill people with low-level dread and confusion. I try explaining it as "a way to log in to a site using an account you already have at another site." That's the most condensed I can get the explanation.
Here's what you do: Create a site or service on that name that is completely unrelated to that company's business. Then, if they go to ICANN for mediation, they'll have a lesser case than if you just have a squatting page there.

If you currently have a squatting page, do something, put a blog, add content to it. Make it seem like you're using it for a legitimate purpose.
Former Wired Editor: We Could've Been Google
Google could pick Git to manage Android code
- The point implies (correctly, I think) that Python still is ahead.

- I'd be willing to argue the "decent set of libraries" point but the .NET libraries still can't compare to those available for perl, python, et al. And .NET only runs on Windows computers (Mono notwithstanding, but installation and maintenance of Mono is still a significant drag on the workload.)

- Server 2008 may be the best OS in the MS world now, but the quality and price still lag far behind Linux/BSD, particularly considering the anti-features (licensing and DRM overhead, for example) of MS OSes.

- You can also think of Ubuntu as having a pay-as-you-go option: Purchase price: free. Pay-as-you-go: free.
OpenID does have support for other profile data: http://openid.net/specs/openid-attribute-exchange-1_0.html

Also, for simple avatar sharing, check out http://gravatar.com
I understand. You are not in a humorous mood.
Really cool... I hadn't heard about this small (64k!), alternate implementation of Python; it has much the same appeal to me as Lua originally did. The home page:

http://www.tinypy.org/
Why is this on YC? Who cares...
Ok, I think I used 'wheeler dealer' while thinking of something more like what Denny describes. Not a shyster, but getting out there, promoting your stuff, doing deals, meeting people, and otherwise getting people on board. And I think that you absolutely have to do that, even if you've built something fantastic. Where would Woz be without Jobs? You need someone who can get out there and schmooze/sell/hype/etc.. your product.
I find the definition of the previous article flawed therefor I can't answer to something incorrectly defined.
Google's moving from Perforce to Git? I dare say Git has won the DCVS war.
Down on the server farm - The real-world implications of the rise of internet computing
Jobs has done enough to be a personality of mythological proportions, but I don't really see him as an engineer or hacker without really stretching the definition of either term.
I don't use OpenID because multiple accounts would be compromised if my single set of OpenID credentials were compromised. This seems like a bad idea.
There's not a slim chance you'll never have a fat chance of unapplying that locally to unnatural language.
that's a bit of stretch on final cut pro.

I would say a new form factor.
It's pretty easy for me to think of people that are in one category or another, but more difficult to think of people who are a good mix. PG might qualify... who else?
What a relief to have an alternative to Lua. For games I would appreciate Lua's incremental GC, of course. But far better to have something tiny that you can add on to than something big you have to rip things out of!
Technium: Technologies that Connect
PHP sucks? No. Programmers suck.
Is there anyone here who has used this and can give us a synopsis of how Fabric stacks up compared to Capistrano?
Volumes to Go Before You Die
Newspapers have known for ages that shorter lines are easier for the eyes to follow. I try to stay under 80 lines, with 100 being my max. It helps me to read and comprehend better.

Protip: `less -S` unwraps lines so you can read a file in its original format. The arrow keys let you pan left and right.
Nvidia buys ray-tracing tech company RayScale
Larry Page: Microsoft has a history of doing bad stuff.
I don't think Perforce is an option for this code, as it's being made public. I didn't see the article say anything about changing their internal CVS.
At the risk of being labeled a heretic, Knuth is great and all, but, in a rapidly expanding field, you can't just sit down and "describe the whole thing", or even the algorithms of the whole thing. Knowledge in the field is a hyper linear curve, and the ability of one aging person to describe the sum total of all knowledge in said field is pretty much linear. That's a recipe for failure, at least in terms of the stated goals. There is something... vaguely dubious to me about how Knuth has approached the whole project, including stopping for N years to work on TeX just to typeset it. I guess you can give him for trying, and in trying, producing some excellent work, but perhaps a different approach might have yielded other benefits.
Notice that Half.com had already been started, built up, and sold long before the patent was even granted! 5-7 Years? You could start half a dozen startups in that time.

File for the patents, but don't waste any time or money trying to make the filing "good". At best, patents pending are quaint old fairy-tales told about a bygone age to make investors feel all warm and fuzzy when you tuck them into bed.
fold right/fold left
Can you elaborate? What's your definition?
isn't builder a subset of entrepreneur?
Just What We Need: Another RPC Package
Ah, good point. I should have specified "open-source DCVS war."
for new folks you should add definition besides each category. though i think all entrepreneurs are builders.
by the way how did u add pointer (up arrow) to count votes?
Derail - A simple web framework in erlang
Mr Former Editor, I knew Google. Google was a friend of mine. Mr Former Editor, you're no Google.
FWIW, Perl has been in Perforce forever, and it's an open source project. But Perforce sucks, so it's being migrated to Git.
Not at all. As an example, look at all the cool stuff this guy has built (and there are significant things not listed):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tridgell

But he doesn't seem inclined to strike out on his own, even though something like Samba Inc. would certainly have a shot at making some money.
ValleyWag - Sprint customer gets biblical over charges
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/775-ask-37signals-how-do-...

1. Write the script.

2. Record the voiceover in Logic Express and export as MP3. Logic Express is helpful for moving tracks around, evening out volume levels, compressing tracks, adding background music, etc. Leaving extra space at the beginning helps ensure you’re ready to shoot when the audio begins.

3. Create a fake account flush with data so the video shows how an account looks when it’s active (but without revealing anyone’s confidential data).

4. Shoot the video while listening to the voiceover track. I use Snapz Pro, shooting at 15 fps, for this. (This step can require some adjustments in spacing on the audio track to make sure things sync up properly.)

5. Combine audio and video in Quicktime Pro. Export as .avi file.

6. Import the .avi file into Camtasia for final editing, adding zooms and pans, exporting to Flash, etc.
Interesting. Linus is the new Larry.
this is a great point. I would consider myself much more entrepreneur than coder but I'm definitely a builder!
Larry Page: Wireless mics can do it, why can't we?
I use Clickpass all the time to log into News.YC now. I didn't think I was going to, but it's so much easier just to click on the orange button.
No More Plastic Filling Landfills?
Exactly what I thought when I read the article. It sounds like he's heard that Lisp is cool, so he pretends he is a Lisp expert, but he has no clue about that (or Knuth). Sad.

Anyway, I was thinking he meant funcall instead of progn, but in that case he should just have written (do-politics).

Finally, shouldn't that be pointy-haired-boss-p? ;)
The flip side is that putting all your auth in one basket makes it worth spending money to protect it. Unfortunately, I don't see any OpenID providers other than VeriSign doing this.
How does a natural language decline?
iPod gives birth to a heroine
10 crucial startup tips
Taking this poll reinforces the mindset that I can't change myself.
Historically the distinction was far from false: it's Watt vs Boulton.

Perhaps it's getting falser as techies increasingly don't need business guys as cofounders.
IPhone at $200
shouldn't that be pointy-haired-boss-p? ;)

Heh. I almost thought so too, but the variable could be referencing the boss himself rather than information about his existence. Somehow I think it's more Lispy that way.

And (progn 'do-politics) does look like a mistake for (do-politics) but then again I kind of like the fact that the form evaluates to a useless symbol in the pointy-haired case.

Really, there are all kinds of things one could say about this little expression. One could write an entire critique. :)
Any employee/consultant who takes that lunch should be willing to have it be the "goodbye lunch".
The Rock Hard Times: the Wikipedia of Music?
Scripting with Scheme Shell
Apple: One, two, three, four, we'll sue you if you send us more.
If the employee/consultant is the star and the company/investor can't see it, he or she is better off elsewhere.
Hints of a Facebook Operating System In New Design
Ask YC: Avoiding "enterprise software" and self-justifying IT groups?
One of the things I miss most about working at a startup is that IT in a startup focuses on actual productivity. Ironically, in a tiny company with a keen instinct for survival, the IT people at a startup don't seem as paranoid as those in large companies. There's no "herd" making things needlessly difficult. And certainly no zealots who believe the only conceivable way to solve a problem is by paying (horrible) software companies millions in licenses. There's no automatic disdain for free or open-source software, either.

What would you do to transform a larger company? To challenge them to take a risk and try to get the job done without Microsoft? To instill in people the importance of proper research (e.g. don't pay thousands for a helpdesk when there are dozens of free ticketing systems)? To reassure them that "invisible", highly effective systems are productive and won't cause IT people to be fired?
7 cool Bluetooth gadgets.
User-contributed job info database.  Help fill it up for your next job hunt.
That's odd, they have this page (and many others like it):
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodnano.html

Apple's legal team maybe doesn't know what the web guys are doing. If they did know, they could have avoided bad press by simply telling the girl about the web page.
Google will be just as evil....give them another 5-10 years
Topic story was not all that interesting (Cisco re-invents the wheel!), but it led me to Thrift (http://developers.facebook.com/thrift/) and Ice (http://zeroc.com/index.html), which I didn't know about.
Ice: a distributed OO middleware I hadn't seen before
Yup. I kinda thing this whole entrepreneur vs builder thing is just a rationalization for programmers that they don't have to be good at entreprenorial stuff and they have an excuse. True, few people are good at it, but it's the same proportion as in every other population, maybe they're even more frequent due to the programmers already being smart and sortof open. There's no inverse relation.
The bad news is that any valuable skill is rare and hard to learn. You're not going to get is as easy as a new programming language - it takes lots of time and trial&error, and not a little luck (and talent, the same thing).
Why the hate? I thought it was a fairly well-written article.
To make this into an easier true/false question lets look at the http://www.startupschool.org/speakers.html Of these Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, DHH clearly qualify, and likely some of the others as well (I don't know enough about them).
this is a move that might help a little against the android devices coming out...its a late move though as i think att should have been subsidizing the "carrier" locked phone anyway.
CORBA, SOAP, JSON, REST... do we really need a new RPC stack? I don't see any new value here. In the end you can't hide the network.
After three decades of minimal-to-mixed success, you would really think people would have figured out by now that RPC is a fundamentally flawed metaphor. It's not pipelineable, which means that it's always going to be slow. It's a deadlock waiting to happen. And it's obscure: it takes the simple notion of calling a method (say, to extract a single field) and hides from the programmer the fact that this simple object might live on another side of a content. Just a disaster.

Without exception, every successful network protocol has a query/response structure. Even things that are "technically" based on an "RPC" protocol (NFS) have evolved in this direction for performance and simplicity. Take a look at the code for an NFS stack and see if you can see the "procedure calls" to the remote server. They aren't there.
It takes as long to master TDD as it does to master a new language. I didn't get good until I had been doing it for a few years. @ardit33 is dead-on about the coolaid analogy. You either get it and can't imagine programming any other way, or there are significant roadblocks you don't want to overcome (UI) / just can't TDD fast enough to justify the time.

I haven't hit a point where I've invested too much into the quality of the software. It's fine with me if TDD isn't popular. I'll just keep using it as a tool in my arsenal to beat the competition.
28 mod_rails / Passenger Resources To Help You Deploy Rails Applications Faster
JSON isn't an RPC protocol, it's a data format. And REST is a web architecture, it lives at a higher level (and on top of HTTP, which is not an RPC protocol).

RPC architectures are things likes Sun-RPC, CORBA, SOAP, XML-RPC, DCOM/COM+, etc... They model the network as a bunch of objects on which you can call methods/functions from within an existing programming environment. Which sounds like a nifty idea until you try it and discovers that it sucks (see above rant).
I understand "hacker" to be a self-created definition for a computer programmer with an altitude. If this is true, then I think there are few of us who would fit this description, including Steve Jobs. But an engineer is a much boarder term and if the definition of an engineer is someone who has a four-year degree from an accredited University, then you are right again, Steve Jobs is not an engineer. My apology.
Or more in the spirit of decentralization, http://pavatar.com/
Pardon me, I'm just bitter today after wrangling with unruly WSDLs.
This is simply the nature of large companies. Trying to "transform" it seems like tilting at windmills. That's why people start startups.
Aging: The Disease, The Cure, The Implications
I would say "a typical web user" uses the same passwords or slight variations on at least 3 different sites... that being said I wouldn't want my openID hacked...(single point of failure) are the at least demanding strong passwords?
One aspect that's been overlooked is that single sign-on is only the beginning of what OpenID makes possible. Once you've got an identity that you can use across website boundaries, all kinds of network effects open up.
I like the idea, but the concept seems a little "stuffy" - You may want to check out: PodTech's Lunchmeet show (http://www.podtech.net/home/category/lunchmeet/). Many of the interviews were a little more informal, and as a result easier to watch for the viewer.
I agree about the separation of power... but holding someone's past against them isn't fair (and a company is technically a person)
Android devices are coming out? Got links?
You're walking a fine line here.

Whether you're looking to invest, advise, or conduct analysis of some kind, it's always important to collect the best data you can. Naturally, getting technical appraisals from technical people is critical, and I completely agree with this thinking.

But things like "take them also, but separately" and "Don't bring management" sound borderline underhanded. Without free and open communication about all aspects of the business you're conducting, you're just planting the seeds for distrust and concern down the line.

Of course, most people will talk more freely without their boss or a video recorder in the room.

Funny thing happens though when the boss is in the room or the video recorder is on. After the first 5 minutes, people still talk freely. In fact, this is the most desirous situation. You will uncover more when people are put together and encouraged (even rewarded) for being open and honest. Some of your best data will even come from their disagreements in front of you.

If anyone ever went behind my back to gather data, it would tell me 2 things:

- They're not doing all that they can to collect the best data.

- I don't trust them, so I won't be doing business with them.
You don't buy any cable box and hook it up and have it magically work. You don't buy any computer and easily throw any OS on it (drivers, etc).

Specifically cell phone companies like to make money on the back end and offer up cheap cell phones to people willing to sign contracts. It is because most people would be willing to sign themselves into a crappy 3 year contract and pay 50$ for a phone rather than pay 500$ for the phone.

Blame the consumers not the customer.
AKA, the world's highest interest loan.
i think the whole lock thing is weired - cell phone should be available as any other consumer items at walmart, circuit city etc. You just go to these stores, pickup the phone and hook it up with any service provider of your choice, same as what we do with our TV, Internet etc.
PHP Sucks Episode V: The Blub Programmer Strikes Back.

I program in PHP on a daily basis and still believe in the arguments the blog author is (poorly) refuting.
I bought Snapz Pro and always hated that software: it was so slow when it came to rendering the final video. A few months ago I found Screenium (http://www.synium.de/products/screenium/index.html) and couldn't believe how much better it was, and it's about half of the price too. I definitely recommend checking out their demo.
Never knew that, but you're right!
A spoiler
I see a lot of RPC-bashing going on here... I actually use it (typically via higher-level wrappers in Java or C#), and it's OK.... but what do you guys recommend as an alternative?
It's impossible don't get hung up on it. As an early stage startup you should have one concern--build the product. A working product is more impressive than artificial projections.
wow! apple can now make money out of this from pixar :)
200$ will come with a 3 year contract.

Still not a bad deal for people who are stuck with contracts anyways with blackberry or windows mobile.
It's not a "rationalization" - it's a recognition that people are different, and good at different things, and how to work with and around that. As I said with the original posting, I admire PG for having 'shown the way', or at least one way, for builders to have a go at a startup.

You can look at it the other way: lots of entrepreneurs aren't that strong technically. Some go out and try and learn, some try to find other ways around the problem - by partnering with tech people, for instance.
Startup2Startup - dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of internet startups
Faster Wireless Networks
Let's grab Google's gazillions
"holding someone's past against them isn't fair"

Huh? Are you in some kind of time warp or something?

No other entity in the tech world has done more to stifle innovation and hold others back in the past 30 years than Microsoft.

Their tactics are well known by those who bother to keep abreast of such things. They have consistently violated every known concept of fair and legal business practice. They have built and protected what should be an illegal monopoly with loss leading pricing, backroom deals, blackmail, cheating, stealing IP, and hostage taking in the enterprise.

Since they can't compete with quality products, they have always responded to competitive threats with armies of lawyers and lobbyists to change laws, change verdicts, or simply overwhelm others with mountains of legal briefs in order to "wait them out".

Not fair?

Anyone competing against Microsoft without being aware of their past is an either a pollyanna or an idiot. Either way, they'll lose.
You can get smartphones free now with 2 year deals, the iphone will be free on sites like wirefly/letstalk next year.
Cat brain could provide bionic eye firmware
I just spend $125 on Adwords sending traffic to a barebones/not really launched site with a sales page and found out about 25% of visitors click to my registration page and 10% sign up for a free account. Once I figure out how to monetize those accounts (it's something health related) and get more than $5 in revenue each it'll be a gold mine as this is something that 50% of the population will deal with in their life (not gender based).

One of the beauties of Adwords and especially the content network is that you get an idea of how many people are interested in you topic/market.

So if you're doing something subscription bases, throw up a prelaunch sales page, spend $100 and see what you get. If that's the only data holding you back from you VCs, consider it money well spent.
Wink is free and helps you make great screencasts:
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/
Thanks YC: Custom Templates, Collaboration & Video Tutorials
Has anyone coined the term an "adsense tip?" Fun stuff!
Warning! Warning! Satire detected!

What scares me is that I had to read fairly far in to convince myself it was indeed satire.
Computer Programs Decide Humans' Fates, Set Social Policy, Panelists Say
Supposedly AT&T is already kicking back money to Apple every month, but I guess now the iPhone will be double-subsidized.
I think Clickpass has the potential to give OpenID a lot of traction among non-early-adopting mid-tier or low-end sites. I gave them some advice along those lines here:

http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-startup/2008-05-02
I don't know your specific situation, but most people use password-based sites that have an "I forgot my password" feature that authenticates based on email. Thus most people have a single point of failure already: their email account.
Alternative for what problem? The issue is that RPC tends to fool people into spamming the network. Where a traditional database query would issue one request and get back a thousand rows of eight columns in a pipelined stream, a (dumb, but entirely plausible) RPC architecture might end up iterating over a thousand remote objects, calling an accessor method for each field, and making thousands of synchronous round trips to the server to accomplish what the SQL query did in just one.