skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
/me tips hat

This would be along the same vein as the prior thread on existential questions. A popular topic among young, intelligent people for whom tradition has little weight.
Ah - it costs > $ 1800
Wow...I really don't remember reading that, but I swear I've read all of PG's essays, at least for the past five years or so. I feel like the biggest thing missing here at RPI is cofounders. There are plenty of smart people, but the mentality here is all wrong for starting companies.
Smasher, could you forward some more details to shawn@sanswork.com please? I think I can help you out having worked on a large number of social networking applications including a couple of situations like you're in where nothing was produced for a long time by previous developers.
Ludum Dare 48-Hour Solo Game Programming Competition (April 18-20)
apologies if this is a stupid question, but is there a way to test a site that is offline using this service?
Wouldn't another explanation for a bubble in housing be the demographics behind the baby boomers selling their homes and moving into retirement communities, or even (I am not gloating) starting to die?
I thought exactly the same thing, as the image loaded ;) survived another day.
Ask YC: Reading from RSS, keeping track of conversations?
I read all of my Hacker News, Reddit, etc from Google Reader, like many people. Lately I've become more interested in the actual discussions going on within the actual news as they are usually pretty interesting

The problem I encountered though is that I can view comments, submit my own, but then going back to dicussions is kind of a hassle since the stories are gone from my feed, unless I explicitly mark them as unread, but that's kind of redundant

What do you guys do in this kind of situation to keep track of discussion? Almost would be sweet if Google Reader had a seperate active discussions/threads kind of deal :)
PG doesn't just "write well." He write provocative, intelligent material on topics that are important to us.

Also, the acquisition of reddit has already justified several years of ycombinator. If a YC startup is a major success once per 5 years, the program is very successful.
Even though the question (imho) is a bit awkward it is interesting. And since there is clearly a following around PG it is a valid question to ask.

I think the reason is that he resonates well with a large group of people (hackers) that are smart and able, but are often very introvert. They often don't get the credit they deserve, are bored with the typical business and corporate stuff that they find simple and shallow, and don't understand why they don't get to where they want to be, and why the world is as it is if you are intelligent and introvert. Paul Graham is extremely good at putting these feelings into his essays and giving hackers a hope that they are something special, and that maybe it's not them that are doing it all wrong but the world.

I read a comment here some time ago that stuck: A guy felt disilusioned at the world and typed the word "why" into google (true hacker style I might add) and PG's essay "Why nerds are unpopular" came up in the search results. This essay, and many like it, give meaning to a lot of people that find youtube, myspace, and Fox news to be below their intellect and don't understand why nobody in this world seem to be able to think for themselves and have their own opinions.

That's why.
If you look at google acquisitions they usually integrate the ones that deal with Adsense pretty quickly. The mobile acquisitions really have yet to pan out. I wouldn't be surprised if this is more or less the story with GC. Google is desperately trying to become a mobile player, but it's unfamiliar territory and probably a money loser at the moment. It's like they're acquiring these companies with shotgun style without really planning out their future integration.
Where are all the other ex-founders giving advice and money to new startups? A large portion of success is simply showing up. Hands up if you got accepted to YCombinator without applying.

As in the open source world, Paul Graham's influence is in proportion to what he gives away. He spends time packaging his ideas into forms that others can benefit from, and he asks for nothing in return. Call it open source business planning.

There are other people that give away ideas, too, and they all have influence disproportionate to their personal success, think Joel Spolsky, ESR, et al. However, none of them have the passion to help their fellow man succeed that Paul Graham has, so they all tend to be treated as second-tier gurus.

PG cannot be compared to other "success coaches" either, because he does not seek personal gain for his ideas, only return on his investments. You get the feeling that he does not have ulterior motives in his writings.
Not all of us do. I visit this site primarily for the links to news about the technology industry.
He believes people can accomplish great things, when those people may not believe it themselves. He reminds them they can.
> He writes well (which can be expected from a harvard students).

heh. heh. Sorry for pointing attention, just funny :)

> So - why do you guys listen to him ?

Because he says interesting things eloquently and succinctly? If you have interesting things to say that you can phrase well, I'll listen to you, too :)

In general, I think he falls into the category of George Soros or Jeff Hawkins or Aaron Schwartz - people who are financially secure by their own making, but haven't given up on working hard toward something.
Ask HN on: Controlling trolling
What do you think the best response to it is:
1) Ignore
2) Mock
3) Reason with

I'm leaning towards ignore.
I am happy Microsoft has stopped doing that, talking to friends who got internships and jobs there, they mainly stick to programming brianteasers (how would you traverse a node while doing blah blah), and at most design questions (how would you design a red button).
ignore.

Mock and you feed the troll, reason with and you fall into his trap.
Paul Graham is Barack Obama, YES WE CAN.
Speculative Multithreading and Manycore
OpenMac - $399 Leopard-capable PC
Is it a train?
Exactly. It would be nice to see a product before declaring victory.
"What do you guys do in this kind of situation to keep track of discussion?"

Actually visit the site.
It's creepy that this discussion was voted to the top. I don't see the value in his question.
I sometimes use co.mments.com for blog post conversations.
It does not work very well though.
"He writes well"

Understatement of the year.

This statement infers that you read his essays. Did you? If so, good. Read them again. If not, read them for the first time.

I've read, followed, attended, and met many "self-help" specialists. Dale Carnegie, Napolean Hill, Zig Zigler, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, and many more. But for hackers who want to take it to the next level, none of these guys holds a candle to pg. Why? They all help me to feel good. He helps me to do better.

And it doesn't hurt that, along with others, he has brought yc and hn to us. His essays brought me to this site. You guys keep me here.

After years of cleaning up other people's messes, I'm moving up to the next level and building the cool stuff that was always inside me. Those essays and this site have encouraged me alot. And I bet I'm not the only one.
Nice find. We should start a pool for how many hours it will be before Apple shuts them down. I'm gonna guess 16.
>> why do you guys listen to him

I guess it goes the other way. PG is a good listener and thus a good thinker. That's why he's popular among the tech community in particular.
For me personally reading his essays changed my entire perspective on programming/software engineering. He is also published (ANSI Common Lisp, Hackers and Painters and On Lisp) thats a little bit different than just being a "buzz" of the month/year blogger.
yes, the cult of paul graham reminds me of people who worship ayn rand. her writing gives people a sense of power, that they can transform the world with their will & determination. paul graham's writings/personal story empower in the same way. although, like rand, it's unclear whether the characters in their stories have real world referents or portray a world closer to (an empowering) fantasy than reality.

(this post makes no judgment as to the normative value, good or bad, of creating empowering fantasies if that be the case.)
Sure, there's a lot of noise in using brainteasers as a predictor of problem-solving ability; but IMO they do offer some predictive value. It's an opportunity for them to see how you think. They're hiring you to solve problems - and the easiest way for them to gauge problem solving ability is to ask you to solve problems.

"Would you want to work with the guy who builds a water-displacement scale/barge, taxis a 747 to the docks, and then weights the jumbo jet using that, instead of simply calling Boeing in the first place?"

Umm, just because you CAN solve these brainteasers doesn't mean you don't know how to call Boeing! Knowing more than one way to solve a problem is almost never a weakness.

And as for the blind bike example, the candidate was not being practical, just being a pain in the &*%. Just answer the question without being a smart alec.
That is very generous, even considering this is a Sunday night. I think it'll be gone by 9am.
Best comment I've read in ages! +1

I certainly agree with this. Paul's essays really struck a chord with me.. especially 'Why nerds are unpopular'.

I've been programming since a young age and I used to love making little 3D graphic demo's in QBasic. I always found it frustrating when showing my friends what I had created.. they didn't really appreciate what it took to draw a 3D cube on the screen. :(
Paul Graham doesn't write well, he writes good. Because insightful isn't a style of writing, it's a type of idea.
8:50 p.m. eastern time and they're gone. Nice call, guys.
Poll: How long will it take Apple to force Psystar to stop selling the $399 OpenMac?
On Sunday night around 8:15pm, Reddit, Digg, and Hacker News received reports of a company named PsyStar selling a $399 Mac on commodity hardware.

(http://www.psystar.com/index.php?&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=1&category_id=3&manufacturer_id=4&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=72)

How quickly will Apple shut them down?
By midnight Sunday.
By noon Monday.
By close of business Monday.
By the end of this week.
They won't get shut down.
Interesting. Does anybody know of a site (or app) that offers similar functionality but does work well?
Before I can finish posting this poll.
"Despite the complete absurdity of the design request, and the complete practicality of his answer, the job will go to a candidate who manages to answer the question by designing an extremely overcomplicated solution for a completely non-existent problem. And that candidate will be the same person who designs their software."

Why am I not surprised that Microsoft is credited with coming up with this type of interview?
It seems like a positive feedback loop. Improved brains require slow development and allow for greater social complexity, which requires bigger brains and even slower development.

To summarize, this article adds that perhaps slow development contributes to the loop, rather than detracts from it.
From http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html: "The focus of Hacker News is going to be anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I can only speak for myself. This story appeals to my intellectual curiosity an order of magnitude more than the mediocre blogs and transient tech-du-jour articles that constitute the bulk of what gets posted even here (a site which is well above average). I would love to see more high-quality historical material and it boggles my mind how anyone could not find it interesting.
People tend to gravitate towards others who think like them. In addition to agreeing with a lot of what he says, I felt like his essays were the first time I ran into a person who thought that graduating and working for someone else was a bullshit default. This is something I have believed since 1st or 2nd grade, but in sharing that idea with other people I got blank stares or expressions as if I had just propositioned a drug trafficking network.

His essays also allowed me to fine tune my bs filter on situations and people, be they jobs, vcs, popular opinion, etc. A lot there.

Finally, he seems to not be a prick, and believe or not, that is a very rare quality. I have never met the guy, but he seems to be trying to make a positive change in the world and doesn't seem to be leeching of off people's hopes and taking advantage of them, like a record company or leadership track in a corporation would.
pystar.com -> "Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL"

Are they down already?
Here, I think, are some of the reasons:

He writes well, far beyond the extent that good writing can be expected from a Harvard student. His writing is at once concise, interesting (at least to this audience), and convincing.

Y Combinator seems pretty successful, and PG is good at it. (I'm not going to give reasons for the success of YC here.)

His books On Lisp and ANSI Common Lisp are arguably among the best books about Lisp.

He is making his own dialect of Lisp (see http://arclanguage.org/). I've looked it over, and it looks like a good language. Probably not all the hype cracks it up to be, but then, nothing ever is. Sure, it has its bugs and a few other problems, but it shows a lot of potential.

There are probably others, but this is all I'm going to write right now.
Paul Graham is a flash light that exposes the many hidden things. After reading his DH essay for example, I see more how so many people use garbage arguments to force their point.
Usually just ignore. In some situations, however, I think it makes sense to make one response, and then ignore. These are situations where the troll brings up some idea you would otherwise like to comment on (and presumably others might want to read your comment).
Smalter that's a great point, but with PG it's not just his writing and personal story that empower people, it's the faith he shows in them with his investments (both monetary and intangible).
Well, everyone is special, Tim.
I think the main reason is that the hackers are an important part of modern society but they lack people that explain their culture: there is in the early writings of Graham something political about the fact that hackers deserve a more central role in our society. He is a smart guy that was able to put many things in the hacker culture in simple words. I think that lately Graham lost his role but in some way he shown that hackers need to express more their opinions and their value and other writers will follow.
The mistaken assumption is reading things into the statement that aren't there. I'm simply talking about having done something concrete and functional rather than only having a proposal. You're leaping to conclusions by projecting some kind of finality onto that.
Swiss Interface Syndrome
Referring to people who follow PG's writing and the discussions on this site as a cult is not correct, and frankly I'm getting tired of the moniker. If Paul were to write something bogus, the people here would be the first to pick it apart.

As with any reasonably well-known person, there are followers that adhere to PG too religiously. I can't speak for these people except to say that they are the minority on HN.

Paul's writings are inspiring in the same way as Rand. But they are different because they span the gap between fantasy and reality. His main message of "Make something users want" couldn't be more pragmatic.

Certainly some essays are more speculative and philosophical than others, but most tend to be focused on one idea: How to do something that is exciting and meaningful to you and fit that into how the actual world works; spanning the gap between your personal fantasy job and the reality of making that into a business.
A judge has ruled that Comcast's decision to filter e-mails sent by the company is perfectly legal.
I use the star feature in google reader as a "watch" marker for developing discussions / topics of interest.
I think every language has an open source naive Bayes/Bayes network implementation. And most of the time they are good enough.

KVM (support vector machines) so far is considered the best classification algorithm.
I think you may have a point! Gaah!

I still have hope that this will never develop into a full-blown personality cult, partly because people keep posting reminders that PG is not perfect and PG is not always right, especially whenever anyone suggests that PG is right because he's PG. Also, people who disagree with PG here are not shouted down.
Actually 99% of people are average and lack any kind of interesting thinking and behavior ;)
> all we've seen is an application form with 120-word answers, and maybe a demo.

The reject group also includes applicants that have stuff to show that you didn't even look at.
There's a "Troll Whispering" session at Web 2.0 Expo SF this year and also some good info in the blog post we put up about it:
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/03/troll-whispering-a...
I often subscribe to the comments feed for the article (if one is available). That results in a lot of comment feeds, but they usually peter out after a few days (and I clean house in terms of RSS subscriptions every once in awhile anyway).
So basically: If you buy the hardware Apple used in the iMac's from last year and combine it with the GMA's that were used in the original Macbook's Apple released with the switch to Intel, you can get a cheap computer that works? Is this really surprising?

/edit: Not to mention it's not really unmodified/vanilla. There's some modifications going on. So you're stuck with the version of Leopard shipped unless you're involved in osx86 hacking.
They're still up. I think they just got overloaded with traffic for a minute.
co.mments works the least worst of cooment tracking systems I've tried. Co-comment just stopped picking up threads in my experience. Dave Winer uses Disqus on his site, and it seems to wotk well fot what it does, but I don't see the mass adoption it requires to become more than a niche product. Tracking convervasions is -- to my eyes -- a big deed not yet met. More people would have better conversations if commenting were easier to join, track, merge and/or link with other comments and conversations.
I don't think that assumption would hold up to statistical analysis.
Yes, and 83.47% of statistics are made up on the spot.

I know it's a cliche, but it fits here.
Confessions of a Flickr Snoopr (Admit It, You're One Too)
I agree - I think it would be a stretch to say someone 'designed' this UI. This is a small project, with an easy UI.

Getting a simpler UI would take more work, but just because someone is a programmer doesn't mean they can't design a good UI if given proper design requirements, and enough time.
Except brainteasers are vulnerable to prior exposure. Once you've heard enough of them you have a bunch of tools at the ready for any others that use the same kinds of intuitive leaps -- and you may not even need to do that if you get asked ones you already know.

Just pretend you're really trying hard and voila, eventually spout the correct answer you appeared to have thought up on the spot.
Focus on making a kickass UI, performance be damned (for now).
then why are you commenting?
Red light camera monkey business may be a national trend
>KVM (support vector machines) so far is considered the best classification algorithm.

In the spirit of accuracy, SVM algorithms aren't _the best_. The best algorithms are ensemble-based, incorporating SVM and alternatives.
i suppose that calling something a cult does imply a false god, but that's not what i meant. i didn't mean to suggest those who admire graham have a cultish mentality; instead i meant to refer to those who have a cultish view towards graham (which you note) and compare those with a similar view towards rand and explain why. (certainly using the word "cult"/"cultish" must be considered sensational if we're comparing graham with, say, david koresh, but i meant it in a more colloquial sense.)

i couldn't agree with you more that graham has a deep understanding of the startup and its economics. you seem to agree with me but with qualification, which i can live with.

an aside: do you think making things that people want really results in the creation of value? i mean to ask this particularly vis-a-vis the creation of something i might call first order goods, or things that we really need. in other words, does it make sense, when talking about creation of value, to differentiate between those things humans need (e.g., food, water, energy sources) and those things that we want? for instance, is the world of value (see graham's essay on the fixed pie fallacy) constrained by underlying natural resources which are necessary for things like fun internet sites that people want to build on top of? i'm sure someone has written about this so anyone who could point me to such a writing or give their own thoughts--that'd be great.

i ask this as part of the question of whether value creation is really so simple. i think this is probably true for the world we live in (u.s. circa the year 2000), but not true for all universes.
The Hacker News effect (we don't generate that much traffic, do we?)
Is this legal? I was under the impression that all licenses for Leopard (the store bought version) are upgrade licenses only (ie. you need to own a previous version).
too late: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162680
Patent-based open source: yep, the P word
you have to realize I encountered him via slashdot when I was just starting out with programming and had some experience in c/php etc. Reading his work pointed the way towards lisp/metaobject protocol and while I still am not able to use lisp for my day to day work it entirely changed the way I look at problems. So yeah I guess I could say lisp changed the way I view programming but it was through his influence that I realized lisp was definitely worth learning.
There's a lot of things that are interesting. All needs to be taken in moderation or this place will end up chokeful of Digg-style news.

TOP 10 BESTEST HISTORICAL MATIREAL

OMG .. THE MOST AMAZING URBAN LEGEND YOU READ TODAY !!

etc etc

There's nothing wrong with the orginal story, but if you are after quality anecdotes, then scooping them from an urban legends site should be your last option.
NewSDK is going to change everything.
I don't know much about the way Alzheimer's impacts the brain to know if it can be reversed, but the brain has been shown to be pretty good at adapting so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to cure advanced Alzheimer's. I definitely hope this treatment proves effective in a more serious clinical study.
For some reason the first image that came to mind when reading this was the "experimental" treatments in the last Resident Evil (where the old guy seems fine after receiving some shot and is able to operate the camera, only to go crazy a couple of minutes later and kill the two doctors).

I wouldn't have expected the cure for Alzheimer's to be something that is effective within minutes.
And Paul Graham will give those bratty NewSDK guys another 6000 boxes of instant noodles to eat if he has to, so they stay in business another three years perfecting things.
I wouldn't have expected the cure for Alzheimer's to be something that is effective within minutes.

Hence the reason for some of my skepticism. How can you even diagnose it that fast?
Reddit got it first, then News.YC and Digg.
Apple's OS Edge Is a Threat to Microsoft