skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From experience, a private beta signup page leads to a pretty decent bounce rate.
I think the "almost" is key here - because there are certainly some functions that shouldn't be outsourced. Some people (not sure if this is me or not) would say that the development of a core application, for example, should absolutely NOT be outsourced no matter the cost.
Yes. [1]

[1] January 22, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/technology/22yahoo.html?_r...
you're right - but it sucks a lot harder to lose after spending weeks/months on something as opposed to a few hours.

these contests are the same as programming ones, the main difference being that the rewards and the time to complete a submission are lower

"Those contests are legitimate contests. They are truly seeking creative and valuable entries. "

So you're saying that creating a logo isn't creative and valuable to a company?

at the end of the day this is still about choice - something that you're ignoring
The list is a little confused. This site throws away single line breaks, except in

code text, which you
get by indenting lines by two or more
spaces, like
this.

Incidentally, why does this site throw away single line breaks?
I suppose that using a site like this allows you to get a lot of designs to choose from, but you can hire a designer (that you already know and trust) and get a bunch of mock-ups that way, too. And they will likely work until your satisfied.
My local design buddy charges $90/hr. If he keeps working until he's satisfied, then I pay for it. Plus if he gets one design stuck in his head, then it can be hard to get him to make a new design.

With this, you get the benefit of lots of people's input without an hourly "tic" as they work on it. You never know what a fresh perspective will give you!
I thought those first two lines were pretty good. It's probably that last one that brought on the downmods.
I had a professor who's sole purpose was to say "Outsource everything except your core competency."
8-year-old Worldisround service closing
Wow. I love this site just to see all the creative minds out there at work. I got so excited I submitted my own design for the stackoverflow contest...

http://99designs.com/contests/6774

It's #180.
Win a Free Trip to Space
Ahh, but if the code doesn't work, you can read the comments to figure out what it was supposed to do, and then fix it.
The article forgets about effects from 'uncertainty': black swan, div/0, singular matrix, etc, if you will

It reminds me about specialization: country T for tobacco which outsources corn to country C. Within the next year, there's movement against cigar and there's ethanol boom

Some kind of hedging is needed: be able to do everything yourself so when outsourcing goes sour (it will, since you have less control), it won't hurt so much - you can go without it

"the best way to get approval is not needing it"
Wheels, I adore your enthusiasm but I don't share it. Companies (not just startups, but any businesses in general) need markets, financial system, basic infrastructure and favorable legal environment just like fish needs water: they are living organisms and certain conditions must be met for them to exist. Preaching for more VC capital in Africa is like protecting human rights on the moon.
Looks like a non-story to me.
what more important issue is there in Africa than creating wealth?

yes, the One project is great and all, and the thousands of charities that exist for the sole purpose of helping to build sustainable countries.

most of the natural resources in Africa are controlled or owned by western interests -- what better way to create wealth than a web startup (although in most places, admittedly) the infrastructure is lacking)
Agree. Outsourcing development is probably one of the likeliest causes of death for web startups. If you don't have a technology-minded cofounder who can build the application, don't start the business.
where does Wheels mention more VC capital in Africa?

creating a service like Google must one create a market for that service in Africa?

surely, certain areas the infrastructure does not exist, but to paint 56 nations and territories with one big brush that says "you have no markets, financial system, infrastructure or legal environment needed to do a startup" is a bit overreaching.
What if s/he holds hirself personally responsible and the product still sucks? I suppose these developers would weed themselves out eventually. But what if a developer holds hirself personally responsible for the quality of the product, thinks the product is good, but is wrong?
Thanks for the plug Parveen (I'm one of the guys behind Bootup Labs)

To elaborate on SRED and IRAP: These are programs that will either offset tax on revenue, or provide direct grants for original research and development. Talking with one of the local CTOs up here, he said use of these two programs basically cut his development costs by 70 to 80% versus Silicon Valley. Basically, there's a fair amount of free government money to be had to get you going, or stretch your funding further.

I actually just returned here from Silicon Valley (lived in Mountain View for four years). There's a couple reasons I did, mostly because Silicon Valley is an echo chamber that confuses motion with progress, but also because Vancouver has a lot to offer:

1) Diverse population ethnicity: if you're thinking about going into China, India, or Europe, it helps to have a lot of local knowledge of those cultures.

2) Lots of local talent: For one, the largest Electronics Arts development center in the world. For a second, a number of "Silicon Valley" companies and thought leaders - Tim Bray (creator of XML), Flock (has a team of 20 devs on Vancouver Island), Lloyd Budd (Automattic), many others.

3) Healthy life: I lost 15 pounds in two months when I returned to Vancouver, without really changing much. The city is a walking city, so we have only used a single tank of gas in th past four months. There's lots of cheap transit.

4) Close to Silicon Valley: YVR is actually the largest airport on the west coast (not LAX). You can be in Silicon Valley in two hours. I often joked with my valley friends that I could fly to Vancouver and drive to Whistler faster than they could get to Lake Tahoe. ;-)

As for living expense - overall, it's about the same as Silicon Valley. Some stuff costs more, some stuff less. The stuff that does cost more, you usually get a lot more bang for your buck. $800K will get you a shack in Mountain View, or a brand new modern apartment in downtown Vancouver in the heart of the action.
in general, the argument he's making could go for any town, in the US, or otherwise, not just African nations.

There are some things that are very difficult to change, and one is culture. ("face your studies")

For several sub-saharan African nations there's an emphasis put on schooling, and a few of those companies mentioned (read: MSFT and Facebook) would never have happened in cultures that don't respect people without college degrees.

Sure in the US, there's not much that respect for a drop-out either, but on the other hand it's not seen as insane to drop-out or to even start a business simultaneously while in school.

secondly, the entrepreneurial start-up mindset in America had it's beginnings somewhere, and in the subset branch of web 2.0/ software-based start-ups, just one company can literally change the whole game and influence myriads of others to come.

Intel, Microsoft, Facebook in 2004. The story of Zuck and Fbook has resonated in the heads of youths across the country, and one can point to him as an example of what could be.

All that's really needed for any region, or any university (for every Stanford there are a few hundred univerisites that produce no software start-ups of any consequence) is for one run-away success, and the rest will follow.
Couple of suggestions:

1. HTTP/DAV access.
2. I wasn't able to get direct URL link, other than by digging into the HTML. Not user-friendly.
3. Changing permissions did no affect file visibility - I can still see it from outside of my account.
4. List of files should have permissions listed, right now I have to click a button to see permissions.

Good luck.
digg worked out ok. there's always an exception.
Shuttleworth's VC firm "here be dragons"

http://www.hbd.com/
Twitter gets another round of funding - $15-20m term sheet reportedly signed
I think the thing that this article, and a lot of rhetoric in general assumes, is that Africa is Africa. There are some amazingly developed parts of Africa with stable economies, legal systems and technology infrastructures. I would expect any outside investment to start in those countries and radiate to the surrounding ones. So while I wouldn't bet on a startup scene popping up in Somalia, it could happen in Botswana.

The factor that I think what you're saying misses is: cheap labor. Combined with a high-prevalence of spoken English among the educated, I think it's possible that businesses would be willing to consider operations in Africa.
This frustrates me. I want to respond to you, but you blipped out a two word response that could mean so many things. In what way is it a false dichotomy. Unless you are saying someone invented it and then now humans are discovering it. Or what? I mean I just don't even know where to begin given the lack of original explanation on your part.
I'm enough of a fan of TreePad that I paid for a license a few years ago.
Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear
Sorry, didn't mean to dup. I use the bookmarklet and just expect a dup to be caught.
born in Africa

Whoop

educated in Africa

Eee

started his business in Africa

Frickin

proudly refers to himself as Africa

Do.

I got a dog that I named "duck". Now let's take him to the vet and see what the vet calls him.
In the spirit of this site may I suggest that the problem is that business owners see no cost-effective ways of aggregating customer feedback. Clearly some of them don't even care, but even those who do have no way to do it - barrier is too high. This an opportunity for an enterprising hacker out there. Difficulty: involves a lot of working with people. :)
maybe nothing, but he's not talking to the grunts, he's talking to the management (or city) that hires and trains them. an unfriendly reputation can really damage you. maybe new york is too big to care, but i know people who routinely avoid doing business in philly because of the city employees' callousness, which in john street's time went all the way to the mayor's office.
To be fair, the guy who coded the digg site posted right here on News.YC that he thought the entire time that he was part of the team.

http://digg.com/programming/Digg_com_created_for_only_200_00...

Although this comment by a digg developer who joined them in 2005 says Owyn (the original developer) fared well, however.
What They Don't Tell You About Starting a Startup
I'm not sure that implying black people and white people are separate species is the best way to make your point.
This may be off-topic, but its awesome!
I suggest you immediately take people to preview page after highlighting is done.
Wow, it's a shame for that service to go away, with all the great content that they have. Hopefully someone will buy it and make it more profitable...
What is going on with Business Week? I have to click five times to read the whole article and more than half of the page is crammed with ads and links.
Alot like http://www.pixish.com, eh?
Sounds like a mis-communication between recruiter and one or both other sides (whatever Google team the recruiter was recruiting for and the applicant).

Of course, it's true that Google has been on a headcount reduction bent for over a year for some departments (and headcount has been capped for many others). It's not been implemented as a total hiring freeze, though...they're just not replacing people who leave those departments. Perhaps one of those departments failed to notify their recruiter that they no longer had new openings.
Fair enough. :-)

Given that I have trouble with dumbing things down for a non-security-literate audience, I think the right solution here is for me to work at educating people -- I'm already planning on doing this, actually, by providing information about all the potential attacks which my code is designed to prevent (and which other code isn't).
C++/Python producer consumer question
Anyone here have experience storing incoming data to ram as files (through C++) and accessing said files through python? Trying to get a gauge on whether I can get away with processing the files without committing them to disk (which is may be too slow). Native C++ processing is possible but I hate making/testing changes in that language.
I'm not sure that your inability to understand a straighforward analogy is the best way to refute my point.

When the subject of Africa comes up, it has been the long and disastrous habit to look at every variable, any variable, except the obvious ones: The differences between people.

Now, here we are saying, "There are examples of successful Africans that we can use as models for the whole continent, for example...such-and-such a white person." It makes people feel good to have proven that Africans are equal to Europeans through such a method, but it is a rather bold absurdity. Not to mention statistically meaningless. Not to mention a bit insulting to the indigenous people.
In the West, universities are eager to support student entrepreneurs in their campuses and even go out of their way looking for students with exceptional business ideas

But the problem is, they are looking in the business schools.
I don't think you should look at it that way. There are a lot of people out there that would like to give it a go - some do it for fun, some try to get a portfolio together, and some are students trying to get better at what they do. There are many reasons for participating, and not all of them have dollars attached.
The other thing they don't tell you is that you can fail. And that it hurts when you do.
Your right about college students, but not high school students. They have the largest disposable income of any age group. Many of them have jobs, many of them get given money by grandma/mom/pop/etc..., but very few of them need to spend money on necessities- almost all of their income goes to consumer goods. This is why so much advertising is targeted at teenagers.

This is also why the internet is going to be death to the parts of the recording industry that cannot (or will not) adapt- the age group that is their biggest customer is also the most internet savvy.
Intimidating and suing your potential customers just seems like a really dumb business strategy to me.
South African Tech: A Tale of Two Success Stories
As women forget the pain of childbirth once they hold their babies in their arms, so it is with startups. New life is awkward, messy, and painful. The antidote and the amnesia for startup pain is the creation of a product or service that people like enough to pay for.
That angle may work best. If you can prove to someone they have no pants on while they think they are fully clothed, that is sure to tag the amygdala, and hence attentiveness.
(1) Women don't "forget the pain of childbirth" when they hold their babies. Giving birth, I'm told, really fucking hurts.

(2) In contrast to giving birth, where the pain at least (mostly) ends after the main event, the pain of running a company continues long after launch.
well most companies and people can't afford to hire a good firm, and it's hell of a lot better than what most people can do.

It's meeting a market need for good enough design (to me it's great) for the little cash most seed startups and people have. I get the impression that the designers against this feel that the design firms are going to go away... I don't feel that they will since they serve a different market
'English has no elegant way of expressing the difference between libre and gratis in Spanish' - 'Free as in beer' versus 'free as in speech' works for me. Also, shouldn't it be 'Which programming languages should you know?' if you're concerned with linguistic elegance? (To be fair, the title may have been written by an editor rather than the author, the rest of the piece is well-written and hard to disagree with.)
Twitter gets another round of fundingNew Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability
Check out the section titled 'What do users say about file-swap.com?' in the FAQ:

http://www.file-swap.com/info/about

Whoever said Germans don't have a sense of humour?
Hey, by the way, I'm curious if any of the people downmodding me are going attempt to actually, you know, show me how I'm wrong. I'm willing to admit I'm wrong, but wheels' responses are pretty limp. I mean, check out my "racist" comment again:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174987

...where exactly is the racism in that? Lots of people upmodded his ad hominem [1] attack on it, but I frankly can't sleuth out anything that would be considered "racist" even by the most liberal of PC standards. Maybe it's time everyone sat back and [just a suggestion] used our brains?

[1] For the forgetful: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Screw.Unit: Behavior-driven Testing in JavaScript
I'm glad someone finally wrote a post on this topic.
Here's a blog describing it: http://pivots.pivotallabs.com/users/nick/blog/articles/433-s...
'If the comments and code disagree, then they are both probably wrong!' - I think that's from Code Complete by Steve McConnell, I'll check tomorrow.
BTW, does anyone here rate Code Complete? I heard great things about it, but by the time I got round to reading it I found most of it was either out-of-date, blindingly obvious, or stuff I'd already been taught or worked out for myself.
Not sure I agree with this reasoning:

"8. Outsourcing keeps you from hiring the wrong person. A bad employee hurts every company, but a bad hire can destroy a start-up. Early hires in start-ups need to be considered very carefully, because they can make or break the business. Outsourcing allows a start-up to get work done while taking its time on hiring key employees."

Couldn't you get just as burned by outsourcing to the wrong agency?
RSS Needs An Easy Button
'So what's more important — money or social standing?' - aren't they the same thing, at least in modern America?
There's a World Beyond Twitter; CenterNetworks Declares Twitter Free Week
From an economic perspective, you want somewhere with a high standard of living (to support the necessary infrastructure), but a low cost of living (the $ you make over the Internet are disconnected from the local economy.)

On this basis the UK is far from ideal - it's an expensive country where the $ doesn't get you far. For this reason the talent in London goes into banking, law and medicine, where the fat salaries are.

Tiger economies like Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel are much better suited - they offer advanced tech infrastructure, but a much lower cost of living. In Israel for example, the talented head for tech in their droves, since it's the best paying sector in the economy.
I think you're depressed.

But, you're right: why should I care?
Top startup tip: Never take advice from someone who doesn't know the difference between "advice" and "advise."
Yes, more advice from people that failed at least a few times instead of know-it-alls who think their anecdote is the huge secret to success.
Tripit: Email is the new interface!
They would be, of course, wrong. ;-)
I was thinking the same thing. I used worldisround for about 4 years now...
I think your downmodding has more to do with your snarky tone then the content of your argument.
'In ancient times, unexplored territories were marked 'Here Be Dragons' on maps and only the bravest of explorers dared venture there - often when they did, they discovered lush lands, rich with treasure and promise.' - Well, the ones who weren't killed by tropical diseases or angry natives may have done.
The name 'Here be dragons' reminds me of 'Dragons' Den' on the BBC, but I found out the other day that the original version was a Japanese program called 'Money Tiger', which sounds better to me.
But some of the submissions are good. And you only need one logo.
Here's the deal:

You've made the case that the reason that Mark Shuttleworth can't be African is because of his color. But African-ness is not a skin color, it's an issue of identity. For instance, I consider myself "American", though I neither live in America nor am I Native American. You then backed that up with a terrible analogy about different kinds of animals. You then extended that to say that because he's white, he can't serve as a roll-model for other people from the same place that he's from.

Is there a difference between black and white communities in South Africa? Of course. Might one of those be at an advantage in the business community? Naturally, given the recent emergence from apartheid in the last couple of decades. Is that genetic? No. Fucking. Way. Implying that it is is the essence of racism.

If you look at world history you notice quite quickly that cultures wax and wane in their world political / economic influence. It's only been a few hundred years since northern europe was a complete backwater and classical arab culture was the center of learnedness around that part of the world. The middle east is a mess these days. What changed? Did white people steal the "rule the world" gene? Of course not.

Appropriately, "Ubuntu", is the African concept of unity of all peoples and races. It is no accident that Mark chose that name for the project. For you to come along and claim that he has no right to his identity because he's what you think is the wrong color for an African is pretty wonky.
Agree with baha about the title. Just to clarify "Should you know" ... if you're pursuing an MS in Computer Science? Sure. If you're building a web startup? Not so much.
"Each age has its pinnacle of technology, and each age uses that technology as a metaphor for nature, for the universe. [...] Newton wanted a clockwork universe, the entire universe as a gigantic clockwork mechanism, with all the parts interlocking and ticking over with infinite precision. Then in the 19th century along came steam power, and the universe was then depicted as an enormous heat engine, or thermodynamic machine, running down toward its heat death. Today the computer is the pinnacle of technology, so it's now fashionable to talk about nature as a computational process. "
I worked on it for a bit longer than 2 days and used a fair amount of time to test and escape user input and to create a set of test data that might break the app.

Textile is nice; I should add support for that too, if I ever have time.
'The differences between people' - are you suggesting that Africa doesn't produce more entrepreneurs because of genetic differences between Africans and Europeans?
The Perils of Ruby
Yes, the GPL requires the complete program to be available under the GPL (with explicit exceptions for system libraries).

For example this is the case with MySQL, where the client library is licensed under the GPL, therefore any client program linking to it has to be GPL (unless you pay for a commercial license).