skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think your best bet is to go on the recommendation of somebody you trust-- ideally, somebody whose been in your shoes, or somebody who advises others in your shoes. Personally, I got my lawyer through a recommendation by my auditor.
imho: #1 quality is "Burning desire to be an entrepreneur no matter what".

(definitely necessary. may be even sufficient.)
The question is incomplete. It should be rephrased to specify time, e.g. should an architect also be a _former_ coder or should an architect be a coder 2 hours a day/month/year? I suppose someone could try to advance an argument on whether someone could be architect without ever writing a line of code, but I doubt that someone would get very far.
octave is pretty good
Maybe naive and pointless, but it is "sound byte quality."

Like the myriad self-help/improvement programs that tout, "Do this and your life will be better. Your truck will start, your girl will come back and you'll find your dog..."

Oh wait, that's what happens when you play a country song backwards. That's IT. The answer to being happy is to play country songs backwards. To which it has been said that to every problem there is a solution that is correct, easily understood and wrong.
Luckily our school had Matlab on the lab computers, it was very useful.
How to deal with incompetence, I mean SQL injection
I follow that strategy with a portion of my funds, the majority is in a diversified index fund.

My top 3 picks a few months ago when I last looked at the market were GOOG, AAPL, TD.
Thanks for the good links.

I was just wondering, what does the worst one year loss matter if you are investing over 30 years? The annualized rates given were positive, and the better one happened to have a smaller worst year number, but it shouldn't really matter. If a fund returns 13% annualized but had one year where it lost 90% of value (hypothetical here), I'd still choose it for the 13%.

I can see how this would matter if you are actively drawing on the funds... then a high volatility portfolio could be stressful and possibly dangerous, but if you are looking at a 30 year timeline, it doesn't matter.
How on earth did this troll post get 17 votes? There's only one paragraph in it that's even new, and that doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said.
Fun for the weekend - image search from your sketch
I think most people didn't read the article... its just a topic that everyone wants to discuss and see discussed
Over the last few months, one common trend I've seen on Hacker News is that there are a lot of articles about characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, or where to live if you want to succeed, or the ideas/implementation debate, and so on. I think a lot of people (including me) are constantly trying to reassure themselves that they have what it takes to succeed, by double-checking if their own attributes are contained in the "must-have" checklist of the day.

I think this is okay as far as academic learning and analysis goes. But a lot of times (not in this post though) people get into flamewars about which attributes will actually lead to success. If the "idea people" win out over the "implementation camp", no shit, the hardcore programmers amongst us are going to feel left out and start arguing for the opposite argument. If we say Silicon Valley rules and everywhere else is sub-optimal, Europeans are going to be pretty pissed.

But I think it's silly for anybody with attribute X to feel upset or left out because the latest "attribute discussion" decided, by popular vote, that attribute X will lead to failure. There is sufficient variation in attributes amongst successful entrepreneurs, that you don't need to make any grand changes in your lifestyle to succeed at this game. I.e. you don't need to switch from being a programmer to an idea guy, or vice versa. You don't need to move, or change industries, and so on.

I'm just saying that tons of people already have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and if they just think for themselves about what to do and ignore all the external discussions, they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.
Invest 100% of your money in small-cap/value funds. They do best in the long run.

Invest 100% of your money in BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China). They have large, youthful populations with better prospects than America, Europe, or China.

I'm afraid that I don't know of any small-cap/value, BRIC funds. If anyone knows of any, I'd appreciate a pointer. Thanks.
One key to happiness and success is to never get involved with the side of the business where this question is relevant.
Followup on "IQ-boosting exercise": Cognitivefun, my website for cognitive exercises
I have been working on a general purpose site for cognitive tests, for informational purposes and out of interest. It's also the first thing I thought of doing after learning some Flash.

One of the tests I decided to include initially is an n-back task variant; as per http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176264 , NewScientist wrote about a recent publication using an n-back task, so I thought I should demo while it's still fresh in memory. Forgive its simplicity (and again, it is a variant), but as always, I'd love to hear your feedback.

http://cognitivefun.net
and the nice thing about Octave is that it's largely Matlab-compatible, so all your knowledge of programming Matlab doesn't go wasted.
Microsoft PowerShell 2: Going Beyond its UNIX/Linux Insprirations
Dumb Idea: Suing Wikipedia for calling you dumb
I do follow this strategy, but I also invest in weird little situations that don't fit into it (e.g. a small, post-bankrupt manufacturing company with a hugely overfunded pension, managed by a billionaire trader). I don't like to discuss specifics of what I invest in now. However, stuff I bought in the past includes NDAQ and IBA; huge mistakes include buying MOVI and MGAM (I sold for more or less unrelated reasons), and not-buying DAKT (I sold after a good earnings report -- it's up 150% since then) and not-buying AAPL (I was researching it, then they announced their first million songs sold through iTunes, the stock went up about 15%, and I said "Nahhh" and decided to wait for it to calm down. That was when it was at, uh, $9. Ouch).

I'm sure this is frustratingly vague.

If you start to pay attention to business -- not in the sense of reading the WSJ, but just looking at how consumers behave -- you'll eventually detect some companies that are either a) able to ask for a higher price than anybody else, or b) able to make acceptable stuff more cheaply than anybody else. About 99% of businesses are second-best or less at one of these things, and those businesses are fundamentally unable to grow without investing equivalent capital. The other 1% can usually have above-average growth without having to reinvest all of their earnings, or have steady earnings that are high compared to invested capital but that can't be easily grown. An example of the former would be a software company or a drug company -- it costs a lot to create a product, but the cost of selling it to a million people is not that much more than the cost of selling it to ten thousand. An example of the latter would be the gravel and sand business -- nobody is going to import ten tons of the stuff from overseas, or even across state lines, so it's basically a business made of hundreds of tiny local monopolies. Some of these are exceedingly well-managed; they pay dividends when their stock is high, and buy it back when their stock is low.
True. I always read the comments first. Comments make the main article fall under one of these three categories:

1. Not worth reading the whole post. Here is the summary.

2. Inflammatory / Trollish. But here is a good discussion.

3. Must read the article. Here are some great insights.
Not really. The system needs an overhaul, not a token increase.
I posted this yesterday: "The best investment advice you'll never get"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=178443
It matters for two reasons. First, it gives some people (including myself) peace of mind that without it might otherwise prevent investment in some of these vehicles. Second, you will probably draw down (or switch into less volatile investments) eventually, and so it ups the probability that when you do you so all will be OK.

Of course, it also yields higher returns on average, so it is a win-win really.
yup, big changes: create a company blog, mimic your competitors.
Ask YC: Why would someone leave his/her cushy job to join a startup?
what personality / characteristic make that person to take risk? its definitely not the money or comfort ...
Your link doesn't work, but here's the direct link to the PDF:

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/PAY/299276218x0x18658...
A small proportion in cash (enough to survive for a year or two if I want to stop being employed). The rest in equity index funds, spread between UK, US, Europe, Japan/Pacific. Some of those equities are in retirement funds for the tax advantages, and for the discipline of not being able to spend them any time soon.

That seems reasonable for me now, as someone who's young and employed. My future earnings ("human capital") are likely to be bigger than my current financial assets (because I'm young) and fairly steady and bond-like. As I get older, or if I become self-employed, I would move more of my financial wealth into safer assets (eg long-dated index-linked bonds).
I got my invite to trial the product on Dec 14 2007 and tested the Xobni service over a few weeks using Outlook 2003. I've also re-installed it recently, just in case there were new features which would change my views - not so far.

Several people have mentioned the requirement to aggregate across multiple webmail clients - I confess that I'm not affected by this as I consolidate multiple email accounts in one location and avoid the need to check separate email services individually. If operating on multiple webmail clients is common practice, then I confess to having been ignorant of this gap in the market - of course, people could consolidate their email in either Outlook or Gmail.

As for search, does Google Desktop search not work on your PC? It searches both within your email [certainly Outlook and Gmail] and across the filing system, whilst being free. This should go some way to addressing your example of locating conversations. As for the media attachments, I concede that I've long since stopped using my email inbox as a filing system, saving them off to file directories if they are important enough [Pst files in particular always seem to react badly].
It's #5 in your list that would be hard to swallow. The reason they have that $45 billion is because of that EULA.
People need to do some math before they say this was a good opportunity for Xobni (and the investors-- who likely have the power to veto any acquisition).

When you take 4.35 million in investment, you are giving away a percentage of your company. Say it's 1/3rd for the sake of argument. That creates a post-money valuation of $13m. Which means that a $20m buyout (once the lawyers get their slice) is, what-- a 1.5x return on investment? The only way an investor would approve that is if the company was tanking (Xobni isn't-- they are buried in good press).

Outlook (and email) is the #1 technology time-sink on the planet (RescueTime has the data to prove it-- someday we'll publish some interesting stats).

If you could walk up to any enterprise and propose to make email 10% more efficient, that's worth a TON of money.
Well said. 10 different entrepreneurs, will tell you 10 different things as the #1 most important characteristic.

That article written by Tony Wright comes to mind:"Every Piece of Startup Advice is a Lie (including mine)"

http://www.tonywright.com/2008/every-piece-of-startup-advice...
How late adopters get into social media
More likely that Microsoft will ride its monopolies into the ground, have an organizational crisis (with a possible trip into bankruptcy, airline style) and then come out much leaner with a new, more community friendly, software ethos.
I'd look to IBM or other companies that have already worked their way from a monopoly to a dominant commodity player.

Specifically I would work on making the brand name as strong as possible, and put a very high value on quality assurance and scalability. I'd try to set up a reputation of, "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft." I'd try to dominate the mid-low server market with ease of use for business applications and become the "premium brand".

Microsoft isn't going to beat Google or Apple or Redhat at their respective games.
Please tone it down. I made a suggestion for adding one word to the title, and said it might be better. That is a flimsy pretext for such a vitriolic response.

The first sentence wasn't even my main point; the second sentence was. You write, "He doesn't have to gird every sentence against being taken out of context and nitpicked." Extend me the same courtesy.
For most of my retirement money, I follow the "Lazy Portfolio" method. Some examples and results are tracked here:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/lazy-portfolios-annual...

Basically, you buy indexes across asset classes so you have diversification within each asset class as well as asset diversification.

It's easy, cheap, and works. It's just not "sexy"
Visualising your social networks
What's next? Murder your competitor to get ahead? Kidnap his children so he takes his eye off the ball? Put date rape drug in the water cooler on interview day so you'll be the only one awake?

No matter how widespread or "acceptable" unethical behavior becomes, it's still unethical. And wrong. And maybe even illegal.

Allowing any of your business processes to be based upon that which is wrong relegates all of your trustability to the garbage. Or:

everything you do * ethics (0 or 1) = your trustability

I've seen this over and over. As soon as someone shows that they are willing to compromise their ethics, everything changes. You will never know where they will "draw the line" the next time.

Exactly when was it that ethics became so less important in business?
10 Tips to Finding Great Web Design and Development Services.
Has your mind been damaged by poor computer interfaces?
Can Rails Scale? Twitter Raises Some Questions
Starting a company and being an entrepreneur.
fire all the managers then raise managers from developers / recruit freshly graduated ambitious managers

that worked great for fiat http://fiat.it
It can be money, with the chance of big financial reward over financial stability. Sometimes it can just for the excitement, challenge or freedome of being your own boss and calling the shots.
AT&T Free Wi-Fi For Everyone
I agree with you but I think you're taking it a bit extreme. He's not condoning stealing but just points out the various cases why it has happened, where it has happened, and how the industries have adapted.

There would be no pirated music if no one were downloading pirated songs and there wouldn't be people selling fake Rolexes for $10 if there was no demand so the demand drives the supply in a way. It's always up to the end user to see whether they want to buy something or not.

He claims that it's counterproductive for the various industries that are being pirated to go against the general trend of humanity by enforcing laws but they should rather adapt the model.

Also, if there was a correct way to enforce copyrights every country would be doing it but since every country does it differently, how do we know what's correct?
My answer in simple, an Architect should be a potential GOOD coder; this implies that he was a good coder and can sit down when necessary and piss some nice code.

I have been in the business long enough to know that an architect with no solid coding experience generally design either a weak system or a fancy disastrous system.
Network Programming in Erlang
Even with a lot of system RAM, this is kinda risky. I think a better approach would be to create a logical volume group--primary volume being the RAM drive, secondary an actual disk partition--and mount it as swap. That way you get the best of both worlds: ultra-fast swap space that spills over to disk if necessary.
Creating something from scratch is very exciting, also working in a small but well focused group gives you satisfaction of achieving something meaningful on daily basis and this could be a big plus. Apart from that if you are passionate about the idea/product then nothing else would bother you anymore.
It is what it is. It is cool to work with hard-nosed, business-minded, sharp people. I enjoyed sitting in on meetings between Private Equity funds and the executives of the companies we were trying to raise money for. I learned the function of all the players in the financial market and I got to stay in nice New York hotels on someone else's dime. I made good money. But it wasn't for me, so it was slowly wearing away my health and sanity.
SEO for your blog
Fire the folks in charge.

SQL injection vulnerability is a sign of poor process design and weak programming.
Former coder implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death? So an architect in the mainstream sense is someone alive and well who is NOT loving programming. A perfect candidate for managing programmers, indeed.
Wasn't this a feature in the early facebook?
Ask YC: Track IP Address to Companies?
I'm trying to figure out how to verify whether a person works for some company. The most obvious answer is to do e-mail verification, and match the domain to the company. I was thinking there may be something you could do with IP addresses to achieve the same verification step, but without the additional hassle.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Is there a good IP Address database to do something like this?
So can you go to a consulate outside of your contry of residence? Will this not raise eyebrows?
Well of course it is. The iPhone at this point doesn't support any sort of advanced "infrastuctury" things that make it any different than a 400mhz laptop with a wifi card.
Just in case I am missing features from the version I have installed, here's what I can access in Xobni from the top
- emails received time summary graph.
- count of emails sent/received and resultant ranking
- request for phone number / phone number captured from email
- "schedule time" which opens a blank email
- create email
- listing of other people that were included on emails received from the contact, and ability to hop onto the email profile for that person if they too are one of your contacts
- list of emails from the contact which you can navigate to
- list of file exchanged which you can navigate to

Anyone got anything different? I ask only because as I'm evidently missing something in the app, based on some of the comments made towards me.

Let's be clear, if you love the app then that's great and I want to hear how it has helped you. If I am missing a trick, then perhaps others are to and so help us to be believers. If you've spotted where this app is heading, explicitly clue the rest of us in, don't simply allude.
I don't ever see this coming to fruit but I LOVED the idea, wow. If the attachment/reader was wireless I would so use it, just to have :)
Especially when The contractor had no idea how to find and fix the Web page vulnerability that allowed the SQL injection attack code to execute successfully.
A classic tale of too many cooks in the kitchen
I can think of two very important principles to keep in mind:

-Diversification: Commodities, property, and bonds often do well when stocks fall. Economic shocks can happen that are localized to a single country or region. It makes sense to put your eggs in several different baskets, both by asset type and by geography.

-Long-term inexorable trends: The world's population is getting older. Well-run but less-developed economies will tend to grow faster than well-established ones. Invest in "iceberg" trends, those that are slow-moving, easy to predict, and hard to stop. I recommend medical ETFs and emerging market ETFs

Of course, throw in some traditional investments while you're at it. Don't get cocky or daring and don't let short term variations spook you. Trading too much can knock a significant percentage off of your returns.
Amen. I'm not eval'ing their move one way or the other, but I would suspect that they have more inside info about their company, product, the deal and business plan. By definition, you know.
One of my college professors used to build all sorts of things with a http://www.fischertechnik.com/ set. I think he once mentioned that it was somewhat compatible with Lego blocks, but I see no evidence of that. Perhaps some pieces work...
You are far, far more likely to prosper in a solid, successful corporate career than as a startup entrepreneur.
One point about the index funds (besides from being very hard to beat the market even working full time on it) is that the huge fees compounding on hedge and mutual funds also take away most of your gains. 2% compounded over 30 years wipes out a lot of the alpha.

This podcast is an excellent intro to index funds and how fees decimate returns (also a fantastic entrepreneurial story): http://www.venturevoice.com/2006/02/vv_show_28_john_bogle_of...
Ego. Not kidding.
Bell's Law of Computer Classes
One day you realize that you only have x days on this earth and y of them are already gone.

You don't want to waste any more of your remaining (x-y) days refactoring the same poorly written crap for the eighth time, answering the same 84 inane emails, drinking the same lousy coffee, looking at your watch through another pointless walk-through meeting, and listening to the idiotic pontifications of a boss who you would never talk to in a million years if you weren't here.

You know you can do better. You know you have it in you. You know you can make a difference. Then you know you have to. So you get out your calculator, work your finances, and when you have it all figured out, you turn in your notice and enjoy the best day of your life.

Did I miss anything?
The article seems to paint SQL injection attacks as though they're incredibly hard to prevent and are thus unavoidable. Obviously, that's completely wrong. You have to go out of your way to allow SQL injection.

The solution to SQL injection attacks is to hire programmers to write your application, not bums off the street. What a concept.

(There is one case where I'll forgive the developers; a while back there was a MySQL library bug that let bind variables inject SQL in certain cases. That's not the fault of the app developer, and it was fixed with a library update.)
Berkshire Hathaway.
restlessness, ambition and greed
> In her blog today, Penelope Trunk wrote that it really isn’t possible to know if your idea for a start-up is any good. I agree with her.

I think both of them are dead wrong.

Starting a company should come after the idea is evaluated from as many angles as possible and you have a confidence that the idea is good. Based on not just a gut feeling and a dream of being a founder, but on a research, planning and a feedback.

In this light the adaptability is hardly a #1 trait, the rationality, the sensibility and the patience are.
Trojan Room coffee pot -- a practical predecessor to Justin.tv
Thoughts on querySelectorAll
It's about doing what you want, taking a risk, and not being afraid. To me, it's about having creative freedom and enjoying your day. Every morning I wake up and am ready to go to work, 9-5, sometimes much longer.

Sitting on my butt doing little to improve my self or a company (ie: being some corporate tool) would kill me
The part where you spend two years on your magnum opus, your hit the end of your runway, your company goes out of business, and your IP becomes the property of investors who will never (a) use it in any way or (b) allow you to use it in any way.

We only talk about the most successful startups. Most companies --- most of the 1 in 8 YC companies that get A-rounds, even --- fail. We don't talk about them.
Pretty neat stuff!
Wide Finder Part 2
Never have a limit on your income
probably the same motivation that makes people jump out of planes