skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you're implementing fluid dynamics in a piece of software you're selling for money, you owe it to yourself to install BioShock. It has awesome water in it - you stop and go, "wow, that looks like real water."
Courses can teach you how to invent, but this one doesn't. :)
There's the problem of how you define readability. Many people evaluate it in a per line basis, rather than comparing pieces of code that achieve equivalent functionality. Measuring readability like this is unfair to languages that favor terseness beyond that of natural language.

In order to understand good Lisp code you need to learn new tools for expressing procedural concepts. Tools that are better, for that task, than natural language. Most people would think there is no such thing. Most people will always stick to whatever feels more intuitive at each stage of their formation as programmers. This is often a handicap to learning to think in more powerful ways.
Report estimates Craigslist 2008 revenue at $80 million
I would first determine if your source code really warrants the effort needed to keep it secure from prying eyes. We've evaluated several factors including the source code, the service built leveraging that codebase, the people involved in the execution, and the business plan that mixes everything together. For us, in every scenario we could model the value generated by the code was much higher if it were open-sourced.

For example, because the code is open to all, the developers are motivated to produce much better documentation and testing harnesses, usually before they actually do the code itself - internal costs go down. This pays for itself many times over in time saved during debugging and deployment.

Another example is that we've received a lot of critical peer review of our code which has helped us catch and fix flaws in our security and design - internal costs go down, public perception of security becomes positive.

In my experience and market research, it is nearly always the execution of the business that significantly outweighs any super-secret Python methods I may have thought were cool at 2am :)
We use cvsdude.com.

commenting from my nokia n810 :-)
Greetings.

Maybe find four or five other people/businesses who need a website hosted, and have them pay you for hosting. You can then get your hosting for free, by becoming some type of hosting reseller or maybe even renting a 1U server somewhere. If you find a reseller package, you would have less maintenance to worry about, most likely.

To answer your question, is there a minimum investment beyond which is just crazy? Well, that is probably too case-by-case to find a definitive answer. How far is too far? You'll know once you cross that line, i would hope.
May I say: Text Messaging Isn't a Natural Fit For Tech-Savvy Americans?
You should take that with a grain of salt. Sure, the YC crew will try to not share your ideas -- but they're humans, and after reading five hundred applications, I'm sure there are ideas which stick in their skulls but which they don't remember came from a YC application.

In the end, the same rules apply to YC as apply everywhere else: If you have something which absolutely MUST remain secret, don't tell anyone.
No More Bubbles
It is answered in the FAQ: http://ycombinator.com/faq.html 'Will you sign an NDA? How do I know you won't steal my idea?'
We seem to be down to 100; the "Mac OS X" one doesn't work in 10.5
Email is very inefficient compared to voice communication. All the time you see email threads that tallied up used half an hour plus the mental energy of people subconsciously polling for the reply, but a two minute phone conversation could have wrapped the thing up.
There's some study out there on email vs IRC for team coordination. IRC won by a significant margin, if I recall correctly. The teams that used email less did better.
Boring old Dell? :) Please... Ubuntu runs on a best laptop ever made: black matte military brick-rugged ThinkPad T61 with a keyboard that most desktops only dream of, equipped with duplicated mouse buttons up and down and a mouse "pin" in addition to the touchpad.

This is as close to true mobile productivity as you can get, looks bad ass too.

The only unfortunate feature on it is the "Win" button, but I configured it to do "Expose" and "Ring Application Switcher" effects.

Jesus... did I just write that? I'm such a geek. :-)
Seesmic Aquires Popular Twitter AIR Client Twhirl
Norvig: Design Patterns in Dynamic Programming
django's templating language is great for small projects, but their object model is a disaster. I'd roll your own data access layer.
Sure -- a real rewrite would be fine. Porting from, say, C++ to Java probably wouldn't be. (At least I wouldn't found a company on something that potentially shakey.)

I think the point that you're getting at, and I wholeheartedly agree, is that if you understand how something works in and out that rewriting it isn't a big challenge.
skillset v.s. toolset. I am quite certain in the right hands php is just as capable as any other "web" language. I agree that the average php developer seems to lack any sense of security awareness.
>supports a range of databases, web service integration, long running processes, asynchronous invocation

those are specific examples of problems that a workflow product would address and consequently a programmer wouldn't need to spend time on building from scratch.
Thanks for the link, that is an interesting language. It seems like it's mostly a lot of C# features / programming style with python syntax and optional dynamic typing. Generally a good idea, though the code samples didn't feel right to me - lack of punctuation, perhaps? Maybe I've just gotten used to symbol-filled code.
I'm genuinely confused about valuations. Craigslist is making $80 million in revenues, and of course less in profits. Say someone buys the company/organization for $5 billion. Won't it take a good many years to recover the price paid via the site's profits? In general, when companies acquire other companies, they should want to make back their purchase cost quickly and hopefully make a lot more in the near future right? Even if the acquirer thinks they can hack the business model, add more advertisements, or charge for more things, isn't it a huge gamble to pay so much over the current profits? I'm missing something but don't know what.
True - but that's enough for most people. It is for me.
I have to say that Github is pretty awesome, and the fact that it uses a lot of the new "cloud" style backend server setup means that the day that they have scalability issues is the day that you should be worried if the internet has such intrinsically.

The one issue about git that I'm not comfortable with is the whole explicit branching part of the the design. While for a large project this is pretty easily the "right" way to design a DVS (if for a large / professional grade project you're not explicitly planning everthing, you should be worried), for smaller projects I think darcs' patch dependency tracking approach is much better (or at least much lighter weight).
Which is most important to you?
If you’re freaking out, calm down. Rails and the developers behind it have snubbed Windows far, far worse in the past :). The original release of the framework didn’t even run on Windows. This move to Git is not a snub.

That's pretty funny and pretty true.
right. to me macros are just a different style of function. i don't see why people would be spooked by them
How do you grow willpower?
Penguin's Putting Books on Twitter and Google Maps
Re: "What they should probably be announcing next is a guarantee of S3 and EC2 placement within a specific data center. Then things get really interesting."

This appears to be what their new 'availability zones' feature provides.
MetroLyrics Becomes First Lyrics Site to 'Go Legit'
http://corknut.org/worksafer/ dates back to 2005.
> I don't read the statements are a contradiction.

Perhaps I was reading too much malice into it, but I came away with the distinct impression that had Demo been muscling in on TC50's weekend, her arguments would have been reversed.
The current $80m in revenue is an extremely misleading figure to base a valuation upon. Craigslist exploit the absolute minimum of their assets and any company taking control could make considerably more with little additional expense without even considering the potential of international expansion or using its ability to expand other brands or services.

While I think the article is more than a hyperbolic with its projected revenues and valuation, I certainly think a valuation of a few billion would be fair, especially when you consider Skype was bought for €1.9b, YouTube was bought for $1.65b and Bebo was bought for $850m.
MySpace and Record Companies Create Music Site
i never really touched lisp until Arc. i knew lisp was the language i wanted to be programming in, but common lisp feels mainframey and scheme has an ivory-tower anal aura about it

once Arc gets its own independent implementation i will probably start using it more heavily and seriously
Pizza.com sold for $2.6 Million
Thanks!

I was thinking of that very link when I wrote this. Dunno know why I didn't look more carefully for it.

The number L = lambda/10 is actually part of the standard definition for a microwave system. Any circuit that has a physical dimension greater than L is too "big" to use standard circuit analysis, because the voltage and current values you measure at different points will be different due to propagation delays, even when those points are connected by a wire with no reactance and negligible resistance at lower frequencies.

The world's biggest microwave system (biggest machine period, actually) is the US power grid, even though it oscillates at a measley 60 Hz. Lambda is about (.6c / 60 Hz) = 1800 miles.

This is proof that, electrically as in so many other things, the Midwest is 180 degrees out of phase with the rest of the country.
Are animals stuck in time?
"... We've had guys right out of college throw map applications together pretty quickly. All the hard work is done by others. ..."

Really. I've worked as a Cartographer. Can you show me some of these applications?

What Everyblock has done (I've read the article quite a while ago) is assemble a whole lot of opensource technology and make it scale. But is this what really makes the Everyblock product impressive? The simple answer is no. I'm pretty sure the EveryBlock product is far more complicated than the simple apps your College mates whacked together. In fact I put it to you the EveryBlock technology is just as impressive as googles if not better.

It's an easy mistake to make as technologists to just see - technology! The real interesting bits of the Everyblock product can be found in

Data collation: the collection, massaging and scrounging of information and correctly applying it to a position. If you read the article carefully there is some very clever collection of data. Not all your data is given to you on a plate. Some you have to extract from third parties then work out the best way to display it with the limited information you have. Everyblock not only does this to the geographical cadasta but at the Thematic layers as well. With google maps due to it's expansive coverage even the base layer is dodgy. I noticed this in some of the google examples in my own hometown (melbourne, au).

Generalisation: the way the data is portrayed at various levels so it makes sense to the user. For example notice how not all the roads are added (but the block structure is). So if you know the major roads you can still count the minor streets & guess their name.

Themes: the way separate layers of information can be interrogated independently. google does this but as a toolset only. It is up to individual developers to do this and hence we have very little meaningful comparisons of various thematic data in specific geographical areas

Ground Truth: is what you see on the map is what is on the ground? This is one problem that Everyblock solves particularly well. They control the geographical database so only official geo data is added from reliable or known official sources. Thematic overlay information can be verified by individual users. If the user information is wrong at some stage the opportunity is given for others to correct it.

Style: The google map layout has no style. There is no subtlety in type-faces, word placement colour. Everyblock developers seem to understand that the difference between an accurate usable map and one that is really easy to read and understand is in the typographical and graphic design.

Everyblock succeeds where google does not, because they have concentrated on several big cities instead of trying to map the earth and fail in all but the big cities. In the end maybe I'm comparing apples & oranges. Google has written an API for others to use. I don't think google cares about the end users as much as Everyblock does.
I would use CollegeWikis.com :-).

if you have ideas for it, i would also contact joe (at) collegewikis.
actually - if you want to contact me to chat more about things we could build in collegewikis that you'd find useful, please do. we're always looking for suggestions. thanks!
How weird - just today I had to program something in PHP for the first time in years. I sometimes like to go back and use languages I haven't touched in a long time - it makes me thankful for what I have now, and the code I write in the old language is always better for the exposure to more powerful languages. Not that I'll be breaking out QuickBasic anytime soon. =)
The future of SaaS billing
> "so there needs to be a universal root language, and ways of warping that universal root language into whatever dialect you like."

sounds like XML

> "A uniform syntax structure isn't required for macros."

it makes it a lot easier!

i don't understand what you mean by 'pragmatic scopes.' does perl 6 have macro functionality?
Learn Programming Basics at Google Code University
should be unified under one syntax, which then compiles

You do get that this is exactly what Lisp hackers who build web apps do?
PHP Free Download Scripts
Seattle is pretty cool. :)
lisp doesn't strike me as a difficult-to-learn language. it actually seems the easiest of them all, definitely not harder than python to pick up. c++ is at the other end
Should handheld computers for 2010 census counting cost $2600 a piece?
I've been outclassed. You win.
If a short-term motivational boost like attending a conference/event (Startup Weekend) is like "fast food" (sugar rush, temporary infusion of can-do'ism enters your system quickly and exits just as quickly, no real long-term benefit (unless of course, you apply will-power...)

Then applying will-power to a challenge is like "Fibercon" - not the most pleasant to subject yourself, something you have to intend yourself to do regularly/everyday..and better for you in the long-run.

I'd like to share with you one of my favorite essays that I've read - it's about Salsa dancing but it's really on 'willpower' and the importance of effort over time:
http://www.unlikelysalsero.com/2007/08/magic-of-time-last-on...
William Gibson: Disneyland With The Death Penalty
That's not a list of problems, it's a list of buzzwords.

Edit: nor is it specific. The class of programs encompassing those things is enormous.
This article presumes that the US economy is based entirely on making things -- physical things.
I find it astounding that data input devices cost US$2600 each. I find it astounding that manual processes would add US$3 billion to the US$11 billion cost. That's about US$46 per person.

I bet you could do it cheaper with punch cards ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Hollerith ).
Well, that's the risk every startup should take like us. Same scenario if we submit a business plan to VCs... the more we expose our ideas, the more anyone can dupe it. That's why a friend of mine who founded Chikka.com said, implement your demo first so no one can just grab it but that rule doesn't applies to all. Though we did our demo already. Why would the YC spends time replicating it when there's already an existing one. And their playing field is more on assisting the startups get funded. So far, I haven't heard any negative feedbacks from YC so I'll take that as sign of trust and integrity. Nobody likes to get dupe!
Series of C++ programming problems
> Unfortunately, there is a performance penalty with dynamic langues, which wont go away.

You'd be amazed at the sorts of aggressive optimizations that can be done at compile-time.
Asterisk
Hi! I am new here. This is my second account just to test if there's still an asterisk besides all the news I submitted. Can anyone enlighten me regarding this? All my submissions ends up only being saved but not published.
An Auction That Google Was Content to Lose
The cost of macros
Help! Need advice on best business credit card to use for expenses to rack up rewards
I am the partner in an ecommerce startup where we are purchasing thousands of dollars of inventory every day by credit card. (well into 7 figures by the end of the year)

The main reason we are electing to use credit card is because it is a great opportunity to rack up tons of rewards points (our suppliers even recommended this). Anyone have any experience as far as the best one to go with or the best way to negotiate for this?

We aren't really looking to hold a balance, typically a days purchases will be paid back within 5 days. We were originally thinking of an AMEX Business Gold (http://www.credit-cards-with-rewards.com/American_Express_Business_Credit_Card.htm)
but unfortunately most of our suppliers limit us to Visa or MasterCard.

I'm currently leaning towards a Capital One No Hassle Miles Rewards Card http://www.credit-cards-with-rewards.com/Capital_One_Credit_Cards.htm
1.25 x dollar and they offered a pretty high credit limit.

I'm still in the beginning stages of researching this and have been spinning my wheels a bit so any advice would be appreciated!
Follow up: A series of E-mail exchanges with someone from FuseCal got things sorted out.

They were very nice and helpful.
Battening Down The Hatches
Your users are your life. Your source code is an implementation detail. :-)

Most Web 2.0-ish startups aren't doing a lot of really tricky stuff behind the scenes (i.e. you can kind of guess what the implementation is like most of the time anyway) and most commercial competitors aren't going to be dumb enough to risk the legal implecations of stealing your code. The chances of you losing your work because you didn't have an off-site backup are infinitely higher than you losing it because a competitor steals it and uses it against you.

That said, since I already had a VCS set up here, and have a little of The Paranoia too, we use a local server for version control and then do a GPG encrypted backup offsite.
Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach
My parents are Taiwanese. I was raised in America for most of my childhood. I got to see how my Americans friends hanged out both as a teenager and as a professional. I got to see how my parents friends interact with each other.

As tx wrote, this isn't a technology thing, it is a cultural thing.

Back in 1992, the author Neal Stephenson went over to China to do research for his book, Diamond Age. He wrote a whole essay on that trip in Wired Magazine. One story he shared was about the cell phones. Powerful, influential men had were early adopters of those cell phones -- big, huge, klunky, mildly phallic. These men would go to restaurants with their entourage and would stand The Cell Phone in the middle of the table to show off the depth and breadth of their social network.

Stephenson had talked to one such guy about it, who complained that it was hard to lug this around. So Stephenson told him how people in Hong Kong and the southern portions were handling it -- by getting a flunky in their entourage to carry it.

If that sounds absurd, there are lots of technologies that have a decidedly American cultural slant to them. Back in George Washington's time, the lawn of the White House was kept short with grazing sheep. In those days, if you had a huge lawn that was not for grazing animals, that was a sign of wealth. Look at this huge lawn! I'm so wealthy, I can afford not to put the animals out there to pasture!

After WWII, with rising population, massive increases in manufacturing capabilities, and financing, owning a house in the suburbs became a foundational symbol of the American Dream.

And guess what? Each of those houses have a lawn. Which a whole set of technologies were invented for the caring and feeding of the lawn: lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, high-tech fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. People didn't have sheep anymore, and it isn't as if the kids went out there to play (not with video games beckoning in the house). So why do you keep seeing people watering their lawns, fertilizing it until it becomes absurdly green, all just to trim it to the perfect height? If you kept it unkempt, your neighbors start snubbing you, because they are angry at you for lowering their property value.

You can take any technology and you can see uses that are always tied to some cultural context. As a culture with a lot of gadgets, we'd like to think that we're using technology in an objective, rational, optimized way. But we're not. People are people.
Python Data Utils
I put a couple of my routine utility files onto github in order to experiment with open source. I'd appreciate any feedback.
I'm completely new to open source and git and also fairly new to Python, so you'll have to forgive any noobish fumblings.
I put a couple of my routine utility files onto github in order to experiment with open source. I'd appreciate any feedback.
I'm completely new to open source and git and also fairly new to Python, so you'll have to forgive any noobish fumblings.
Oh of course. Sorry if it sounded like I was criticizing... Not my intent at all. All the best!
The question is... was this comment posted before or after this xkcd comic was published: http://xkcd.com/406/. I believe both were within the hour.
1) seek what you aim for

2) work on interestring problems; toil hard and achieve them

3) remind yourseves first two things whenever you are alone
aaron swartz
Grow willpower? It's not a sprint, the harder thing is sustaining willpower.

The trick is balance.

Force yourself to take breaks and give yourself rewards. I finished a big piece of code on Tuesday and went for a bike ride to the Persidio. Exercise is also a great way to deal with stress.

Eat well, splurge a little and make sure you are eating foods high in Omega-3. Your brain will thank you.

Talk to your friends about your ideas. It is energizing evangelizing your ideas and getting people passionate. Doing so over a pint at the Toronado is a bonus.

And finally have fun! We have one life to live, do something that you deeply care about.
>The real problem here is that it’s hard to respect any article that mentions a study without providing references.

This guy wrote two books and doesn't know how to use Google?
Everything is for sale on Craigslist, and Craigslist itself is not for sale (imagine sponsored ads on the main CL page - it's antithetical to CL)
The Five Orders of Ignorance 
PDF version is here:
www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/diwan/3308-07/p17-armour.pdf
PDF version is here:
www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/diwan/3308-07/p17-armour.pdf
Bubble 2.0: The bubble to end all bubbles?
My dog barks at my wife and I with alot more zeal when we've been gone from home longer periods of time. Theory dismissed.
What Corporate Projects Should Learn from Open Source
Builders: No full real estate recovery until 2010
Dupe, dupe. WTB super de-duper.
Motorola cuts another 2,600 jobs
Entrepreneurial Proverbs
Is it my lucky day?