skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you make a facebook app, you can piggyback off their friend list (=address book) to make things easier for your users.
The 220,000-tonne cruise liner that has its very own New York-style Central Park
You think an application form indicates thought about the program? They're just going to copy a few forms and start throwing thousands of dollars at people... Right...

If this were a statically typed conversation, it would have been impossible to make a mountain from this molehill.
It also depends on what type of bar/website you want to build. Is it just a "cool" place, or is it a place for regulars to hang out at? I love going to the local dive bar to see familiar faces and share drinks with the neighbors. HN is similar to that. Sometimes, usually not by my personal choice, I have to go to those "cool" joints for events and such. That's fine too, but they obviously cater to their niches.

I used to live in Vegas for a while and most of the clubs on "the strip" were definitely catering to the cool crowd. How did they keep up with one another? Constant re-branding, marketing, positioning, theme parties, etc. It's incredibly tough competition but the financial rewards were also big. As a local, I only went when I had guests in town who insisted on the Vegas experience. Contrast that to the clubs for "locals", where they gave you rewards points for coming, cheap drink specials only if you knew, and a very friendly atmosphere.
Because it doesn't make any sense? How can you possibly have internet "without the concept of bandwidth"? Do you mean you want infinite bandwidth at no cost? That's not a very mind-expanding proposition.
I suggest Deitel's C++: How to Program as a good introduction to the language. If you read a chapter a night and do several of the exercises, you could get through the book in under a month.

Personally, I think C++ is a great language. Many people don't think as highly as I do of it, instead preferring some of the more dynamic typing languages, but you have a lot of power at your disposal once you manage to wrap your head around it.

I got started with C++ because I come from a financial background, and most financial apps in the real world are written using C++.

Why do you have to learn the language within a month?
Seth Godin: The Pope is coming
http://answers.yahoo.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/answers

http://qwizzy.com/

A main issue with these kinds of systems are that the kind of 'problems' people are best at solving don't necessarily have conclusive answers. And many people are really bad at phrasing their question/problem to begin with.
10 Smart Ways to Cut IT Costs During a Recession
Does this remind anyone else of pipelining in computer processor design?

This article brings me back..
I use Yahoo search. No problem if it would be blocked though.
i've heard good things about it. thats about all i can say.
This poll is mixing the two issues of allowing Yahoo/MSN search, and constraining News.YC growth.

If the main aim is to constrain growth, wouldn't it make more sense to block popular Google, and allow a less-used engine for utility search?

I got the impression a few weeks ago (from this comment -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=146623) that you were OK with inlink-driven growth; has something changed?
Phrack 65 is out
mod_rails was released only this week. I expect to see a lot of experiences in the coming weeks. I'm curious too.
I use yuicompressor for everything. I merge all the files into 1 then compress it. Saves on request overhead and amount of data that needs to be transferred and makes a big difference. Only issues I've had is with making sure I concat my files in the right order.
This patchwork deny/allow is nearly as bad as banning everyone but Google. Every small site will make the decision of who's young enough to deserve a chance differently -- making only Google the safe choice for searching.

A principle of equal access by any well-behaved search engine is the only policy which supports startups and diversity. The market already has a winner-take-all quality; why make it even worse for competition?
For JavaScript, I've settled on using JSMin (http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html) + GZip at the server level. Someone did a test of various compression tools and found that while they had wildly varying sizes before GZipping, they all came out to roughly the same size after GZip, except that I think raw+GZip was a bit bigger than JSMin/Packer/YUICompressor+GZip. So there's no reason to pay the extra decompression & debugging overhead that Packer entails.

You'll probably want to concatenate all your JavaScript files together to save on HTTP requests. I wrote a dependency analyzer that reads dependency info off the JSDoc and automatically topologically sorts them to get the correct ordering. I'll probably open-source it and put it on the web when I get a chance to do some code cleanup and documentation.

I don't use anything for CSS; I probably should, but it hasn't been a big problem. I've heard that Dreamweaver will automatically remove whitespace for you, but I get annoyed by that kind of munging, and my guess is that GZipping will eat up all the bulk anyway. Just follow all the normal rules about factoring your CSS for maintainability - you want to actually think about what you're trying to accomplish, and assign rules based on the semantics of the page. The worst CSS bloat I've seen has come from coders just copying & pasting some CSS example off the web whenever they have a problem. Understand what you're doing & don't cargo-cult.

HTML is easy: use semantic HTML, understand what you're doing, don't add superfluous tags or attributes unless you need them. And GZip it, of course. I've never known HTML to be a problem, bandwidth-wise, unless you're serving up massive amounts of content.
How many people actually come from Yahoo and MSN searches? I would guess that the publicity news.yc would receive from this action on the tech blogs would send more people here than simply allowing those spiders to continue indexing. Otherwise, I'm all for blocking them.
I don't understand your comment. Could you clarify?
i think "ruminations on c++" by the same authors i.e. andrew koenig and barbara moo is also very good. if you can get your hands on "barton and nackman", its nice too.

imho, the fundamental problem with the language is the principal of maximum-surprise. what you don't know can really hurt you...
Somebody's taken their Apple™ Marketing Training Course.
The groups functionality on LinkedIn sucks. It's also unclear what is "acceptable" practice in terms of communicating with members of the group.

The OnStartups.com group for startup fanatics (http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/2877/30950504D0B7) has 7,000+ members, but there's so much that could be done with it if LinkedIn had some simple community features -- or, finally got around to releasing an API for app developers.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2555588/Intelligence-and-rhythmic-...
I'm all in favor of constraining growth.

And, I'd say that if there was a way to ban Google search, but have a decent way to search HN, then I'd say ban Google, too. But at very least I think that Yahoo and MSN search could be banned.
I voted to remain visible.

I assume that resource is not a problem for YC. This fact, coupled with YC not having a search feature, leads me to believe that it's better for YC community that this site is indexed by more than just one search engine.

One big reason, as pointed out by Tichy, is that not all of us use Google as our primary search engine. By cutting off Yahoo, MSN, etc, but not Google, you would essentially be forcing us to use it to search the content of this site. Do that and you could be going down a slippery slope.

And I agree with the "ban all or ban none" mentality.
Hacker news should remain invisible to the crawlers.
That statement is roughly equivalent to "imprison no one or imprison everyone".
What is that different set of problems?

(Since people tend to be sarcastic about this, maybe I should add that I don't mean it that way. Just curious.)
I love the simplicity of the design. It really directs my eyes to what is important on the page. Keep up the good work.
I have to disagree with your advice to avoid vector and map.

If you're used to python, you probably have a very list- and dict-centric method of programming, and you are probably not very familiar with explicit memory management. vector and map are pretty simple and correspond closely to the python list and dict classes.

In fact, I would recommend that new c++ programmers used to scripting languages avoid using "new" entirely. With vectors and maps this shouldn't be too hard.
Does that actually work for people? I've tried using Google to search News.YC for an older topic on a couple of occasions, and the results have been very hit-or-miss. Is it just me?
on the flip side, I have a question for kashif, any recommendations for learning Python really really fast?
It's a bit late to say that they all will fail...

I could say that for the majority of the time, face to face communications are what's failing people. It's inefficient and limiting for so many purposes.

There are times when I get more satisfaction from talking in person. When talking to the opposite sex in a non-work capacity or having beers with the guys or doing sports. For the first of those at least, 95% of the world doesn't live within constant reach of enough people to keep it interesting.
I'm not able to reimage my desktop PC at work due to draconian IT policies (darned support and compatibility).

I really would love to completely rid myself of WinXP and replace it with Ubuntu. However, this looks like a good compromise for the time being. I have administrative access to my PC and can use Ubuntu in "stealth mode".

I am going to download and install this cute little puppy ASAP!

Thanks for the link!
Jet Blue may be great, but airports still suck. And unless Boeing's experiments* with bio-fuels pay off, airlines will continue to face increasing fuel costs that make air travel unsustainable, while the American train industry lets Asia innovate and bring the costs of high-speed magnetic rails down.

*http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200...
Yeah, it's pretty horrible. On the one hand I don't want to randomly spam people, on the other, just having a group that you can ... browse, seems rather lame.
lets block all search traffic and then take this even further -- lets have all incoming links get forwarded to a dummy hacker news with nothing but lame stuff so that anyone trying to access the site from a blog or something with an HTTP_REFERER will get redirected to the lame site. that'll definitely keep out the unwashed masses.

:)
All I need is a programmer
Phoenix: Microsoft's Compiler Development Framework (includes 42 min video interview)
Phoenix is the code name for the software optimization and analysis framework that is the basis for all future Microsoft® compiler technologies. The Phoenix framework is an extensible system that can be adapted to read and write binaries and Microsoft Intermediate Language assemblies and represent the input files in an Intermediate Representation, which can be analyzed and manipulated by applications by using the Phoenix API. The code can then be written in binary or JITable form for execution.

See also:

http://research.microsoft.com/phoenix/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(compiler_framework)
ULocate's Mobile Location Based Apps Dev Contest
All you mobile entrepreneurs in the house, check it out - while definitely interesting; perhaps not in the same league as Android contest or the Kleiner Perkins iPhone fund. Closest I can compare it to is Loopt's developer program, which is also worth checking out!
have you looked at what http://www.muchobene.com does?
I hope it is not that... That would kinda ruin my faith in humanity.
In a similar situation actually! I like your approach!
Not exactly. Officials from one of the government agencies issued an opinion that WiFi devices require registration by the end users. Other people including other officials pointed out that this would contradict existing law that frees certified end-user devices from the need of being registrated (though commercial WiFi equipment including e.g. Cisco is not).

So it is an open issue, rather than a definitive "must register". This is not the first case when a cretin from a government agency blurted out something as stupid as this; and certainly not the last. In the end the underlying cause is far less sinister than one might think - they simply want to milk public for the licensing fees.
Pretty stinkin' cool. Although it's hardly Central Park (maybe in acreage per population). With 5,400 people on the boat, it's hard to imagine that thing not being PACKED. The pictures have 20-30 people in it. And with 8 decks above it, how is it not going to feel like a big hallway or a skylit mall?
Isn't that fair?
(plug)

If you remember some key words from the title, you can do a quick find in http://www.kirubakaran.com/phr0zen (snapshots of front page). It is not really search search but I find it useful all the time.
That's what I assumed what they were going for. Actually, I fully support this approach.
YUI is great, but it won't remove trailing semi-colons in CSS. I've found YUI gives the best compression -- I used to use dojo shrinksafe.

Try this to compare:
http://compressorrater.thruhere.net/
Re: Why There Aren't More Googles
This too: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc136756.aspx

"Create a Language Compiler for the .Net Framework"
Why not solve the real problem and set up a search engine for News.YC? This has other advantages such as controlling what shows up in the results, different ways to sort them, etc.

It's easy to do with open-source software such as Solr (lucene.apache.org/solr) or Hounder (hounder.org, shameless plug because it is our product), which powers the wordpress.com site.

Edit: it looks like someone already did this: searchyc.com.
I also wonder if they take into account the "muscle memory" effect in which musicians (and anyone who does complex tasks with their hands regularly) tends to store some information in the nerves and pathways of the hands themselves, rather than the brain.

In other words, could a stupid drummer game the system?
Phil Greenspun agrees: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/04/16/bad-news-for-p...
Here is a distilled version without unnecessary words:

"A Russian government agency has proposed mandatory registration of all WiFi devices.

According to Fontanka.ru, the government agency responsible for regulating mass media, communications, and cultural protection has stated that users will have to register every WiFi-enabled device with the government and receive special permission in order to use the hardware. The agency says that registration could take as long as ten days for standard devices like PDAs and laptops and that it intends to confiscate devices that are used without registration. Users who wish to operate a wireless access point or WiFi-enabled home router are expected to go through an even more onerous process that will involve submitting documentation and obtaining a license. In certain regions, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, users will also have to receive special approval from the Federal Security Service.

The policy, which was explained to Fontanka.ru by the Russian agency's deputy director Vladimir Karpov, could reverse existing policies like a 2004 government panel decision to provide blanket permission for indoor wireless access point operation and a 2007 policy that allowed use of mobile WiFi devices without registration. According to The Other Russia, the Russian government agency that is responsible for issuing the new policy was created when the Russian media and telecommunications regulatory bodies were merged last year."
I would set NOFOLLOW but not bother with NOINDEX, assuming those crawlers handle the same meta tags google does. That way news.yc pages people link to from other sites would be indexed, but x urls would be left alone.

I do not currently use Yahoo or MSN search, but would rather not have the option of using them cut off.
The Truth About Baby-Boomer Gamers
Yes, they actually exist and a whole lot more than you think. In fact, they enjoy more "adventure" and "intellectual" games such as Myst: Uru; read the paper for more details!
Are there any web companies besides Google, Amazon, and Yahoo that are very profitable? 
I was writing a business plan yesterday and trying to think of a good model besides Google but couldn't think of a great one....
So you think without the internet, men wouldn't be interested in pictures of pretty girls?
Hey Samrat,

Here is what I recommend.(order by preference)

1. http://homepage.mac.com/s_lott/books/python.html
2. http://www.diveintopython.org/
right on. then implement a search feature
Client in a hurry. This account is important to us. :)
That is also hopelessly naïve.
C++ FAQ is like an instant cafe for the language, give it a shot! http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
The one part that I do find useful is that when searching for people, you can limit the search to users that belong to a certain group.
This same story seems to get rehashed weekly here. Without insight into what the business is, you can't really judge how important a programmer is. For some, it's paramount. For others, it's not as important.

Interestingly enough, a lot of people get stuck in some sort of weird trap: Their idea is worth so much to them that they won't give up equity yet their idea is worth so little that they won't invest in it.
I don't mean it to be a patchwork system, I should clarify, a simple deny Yahoo, MSN works fine with me since Paul is making a business decision. What is not fine with me is allowing only google, and denying everyone else.

Like you, I support startups and want diversity and innovation, which is why I would like search startups to crawl this website.

Hope that clears it up.
No, the example doesn't cheat.
You hit on the point of the example.

With batch processing, and large levels of inventory you have a lot of idle inventory (waste).

Adding two extra people to work on the idle inventory (instead of having it sit there) isn't cheating.It's not letting inventory sit idle, build up, and collect defects because of a bad production run.
That does seem nasty. Although from their perspective it makes a twisted sense that since they can't compete with YC on benefits to the startup groups, at least they can pressure them into accepting, and not lose out on the investment opportunity for themselves. But that just says that at the root of it, they have themselves and not the startup's best interests in mind.

Of course everyone has their own interests in mind, but what seems to make YC's self-interest compatible with a founder's self-interest is the degree of freedom afforded the founder. As you said in one of your essays, investors can often suffocate a startup by not allowing enough freedom, which isn't in either of their best interest.
I disagree. Avoid native arrays; only use them when absolutely necessary. They are error prone and primitive. The STL data structures and algorithms are powerful, and are the best way to write a small amount of code that accomplishes a lot. What you're suggesting will result in complicated, buggy code to achieve simple tasks.

Getting all of the details of the STL right is tricky and takes time, but using the simplest features is still the fastest way to write good C++ code. Since he already knows Python, it's mostly a matter of mapping the concepts from one language to another.

I can't stress this enough. If you find yourself thinking, "Hmmmm, I need a list of these," use std::list. If you find yourself thinking "Hmmm, I need a structure that maps these values to those values," use std::map.

When learning a new language, I think it's best to start using that language's idioms right away. C++ is no exception.
I liked his link about the tech IPO market being dead because of the types of businesses being built not because of lack of interest from the market. Here's the link he was talking about:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/how-to-fix-ventur...

Does anyone know of any companies that they thought should have been able to IPO but couldn't?
I'm glad that someone else pointed out that VB.Net, despite its technical merits, has a serious marketing problem. No matter how good it is, many people will not take it seriously because it has "Basic" in its name. Not to mention the baggage around its previous usage.

I think MS needs to pull a "KFC" or an "Arc" to duck the baggage associated with Basic.
Additionally, the obsolete question(s) on their application (no longer present on YC applications) were not their fault. A bug has been filed with y2combinator: http://y2combinator.com/
I think it's invaluable for everyone. As your understanding of the language improves, so does your retention of ideas from the book. Stroustrup precisely lays out what he thinks are good C++ practices throughout the book; might as well expose yourself to them now.
But if you have two extra people working, then you could do each 'batch' step in 3 1/3 minutes, not 10. If the point was "all else being equal, continuous processing is faster" then it cheats: all else is not equal in the examples given.

If the point was about idle inventory, specialization, risk mitigation, etc.... then it would be nice if it had mentioned those aspects instead of focusing specifically, and misleadingly, on throughput.

All else being equal, throughput will be equal as well. Continuous processes will produce their first products much more quickly than batch processing, but the time to completely finish the same volume (again: what the examples focused on!) will be the same as batch processing plus the extra time added while the late steps are idle, waiting on the early ones.
That is cool. My username returns my profile here as the number one hit. I had no idea it would score so highly.
IBM considering switch to Macs
You don't have to be insulting to make a point. I understand you may be using Google and like it, you must think about people using Yahoo as well. It is selfish of yours to base your judgment on your preference. If I'm missing something let me know.
Do you have a link to: "Someone did a test of various compression tools and found that while they had wildly varying sizes before GZipping, they all came out to roughly the same size after GZip, except that I think raw+GZip was a bit bigger than JSMin/Packer/YUICompressor+GZip"
There's no technical reason that trains can't be an effective, environmentally friendly alternative to intra-region air travel today. The problem is that the government chooses to heavily subsidize airlines, while investing virtually nothing in passenger rail. Shame, really.

I'm not saying that we would be seeing fast, cheap trains between San Francisco and New York -- but it's ridiculous that there's only one train between Seattle and San Francisco, and that it takes nearly a day to get there.
12 Cool Outlook Add-Ins To Make Your Inbox More Social And Productive
Domain parking firms like Sedo. Also profitable as ROI might mean a small unheard of startup could be more profitable than Google in terms of relative profitably but just on a smaller scale. For example, ecommerce B2C firms, selling moderately priced items, whose operation is only made possible with the web could theoretically be more profitable than the ones you mentioned.

Eg: "SnapNames and its competitors would then auction off deleting domains, generating an average of $100 per domain (with some going for $100k or more). SnapNames was recently acquired by Oversee.net for $35 million, based on yearly revenues of around $40 million and profits of $3 million or so."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/05/domain-industry-intrigu...
One situation I ran into recently: computational geometry.

It's not usually just an inner loop that needs to be carefully optimized, often there various levels of calculation that need to be done.

I'd actually much prefer to use Ocaml for that use case, but libraries made the choice of C++ for me. (C++ is also good to have on the resume.)