skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: Seeking advice for future unemployee in the context of start-ups.
I will be leaving my job around December and am not entirely sure what I want to do next. I am considering maybe something start-up related. I live in NYC. I'm 28. I am considering grad school as a way to expand my mind until the right idea hits. I simply want something exciting and figure this is the place to ask.

Edit: This is a first shot at the question. I found out this morning that I'm employed until Dec. My first thought was, "I wonder what the people on YC would do next." I heard Grad school takes up most peoples time so I figured Grad school vs. Start-up was expected. Some comments below indicate otherwise. Do VC's have any inhibitions towards funding someone my age? I'm the type who can spend money but can just as easily go three months on ramen and barely washed clothes.
The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself
Google Advertises On Facebook; Zuckerberg Doesn't Reciprocate
Who says social networks aren't a great place to advertise?
Bug Labs' developer challenge: Write a cool app, get a six pack
In this day and age, whether or not something is available is no longer really a question. The only thing that is relevant becomes how much it costs to get it. In this case, the cost of shipping perishable goods to these "islands" on a daily/weekly basis.

Even if fish were sufficient, I don't think any of the inhabitants would appreciate eating fish and fish alone day in, day out. Non-perishable goods like crackers, chips, Pepsi, coffee, sugar, flour, etc. can be shipped in large quantities and cheaply (via barges). But stuff like eggs, milk, fresh meat, and other goods that can be held in storage for long periods of time without adversely affecting the quality and nutrition of their constituents need some other solution.

At any rate, they'll have an easier time at getting something to eat than the inhabitants of the International Space Station for sure :)
(A), your English won't improve unless you make a lot of mistakes and correct them. So just write!

(B), There are quite a few native speakers of English whose writing is superb but who can't spell worth a damn. I have often wished that these folks would give edit permission on their blog to a fan or two who could sneak in and edit the grammar. If you can find (or hire, cheap) a person who will do this for you, there's nothing wrong with it. Pro writers all have editors... usually several editors.

But you'll find that it's easier to want cheap or free editorial help than it is to find it. So don't worry too much about it. See Step A.

(C) Your English reads just fine to me.

(D) Why not blog in your native language occasionally, as well as in English? There's nothing wrong with having more than one blog.

One big point of blogs is to wrangle over your own ideas by writing them down. You might as well do that in a language which you are comfortable using.

There may be other native speakers of your language who would be ecstatic if a tech blogger showed up and started writing things that they could read comfortably.

Not that I don't understand why you'd prefer to use English for a lot of things, just as many people prefer to do their writing on news.yc and live in a startup hub.
Digg - Miro - Internet TV Blog » Blog Archive » Got Virgin ISP? Can
"Hey everyone, guess what? Fish for dinner again!", followed by a beating of the cook and a mutiny.

Joking aside, they could probably trade something to have someone float a few cows their way.
private message boards aren't crawlable either. there will always be a demand for a walled garden.
If I recall, the article didn't mention any East-West differences, it mentioned GDP differences.

"The United States, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom, which offer women the most financial stability and legal protections in job choice, have the greatest gender split in careers. In countries with less economic opportunity, like the Philippines, Thailand, and Russia, she writes, the number of women in physics is as high as 30 to 35 percent, versus 5 percent in Canada, Japan, and Germany."

Japan is listed as one of the countries where women don't don't pursue IT carriers. The common trait is economic, not social.

I think that we should deal with people on an individual basis and not a group basis. It does not matter why people choose the careers that they do, what matters is that they are happy where they are. If you find that a bunch of women are unhappy because they didn't choose or were denied a career in IT, then you have a cause. If you find a bunch of women who are unhappy because a bunch of other women didn't choose careers in IT, then you have a bunch of busybodies that don't have my sympathy.
This is what they plan to eat and drink:

http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/commented/paper/infra.ht...
Amanda Congdon is coming back to the Web. Yippie!
It would be nice to have a cross platform API for GUIs for Python. It might be slightly handicapped, or might have options only available on certain system, but it would help get the wrinkles out of today's GUI programming. WxWidgets and QT are pretty good.
I guess ur english is just fine for writing blog. Blog is an expression not somekind of grammer test. Its your opinion,thoughts,ideas etc. People dont care about the grammer, they care about the content. So just go and write that first blog, rest will taken care.
Photos of new Palm Treo emerge, confirm that Palm is still a year behind the industry
One of my favorite web-design blogs is Antonio Lupetti's "woork" (http://woork.blogspot.com). English isn't his first language, and his grammar is sometimes a little quirky, but I read all of his posts because they're usually quite informative and entertaining despite the occasional grammatical or spelling error.

So I guess I agree with everybody else - just write your blog. If it's informative and fun to read, people will read it.
as if it's so hard to give cynthia at AT&T a fake name and address.
2010 Does Not Exist: Event Horizons and Software
I'm too lazy to look for it right now (this baby thing is exhausting), but I recall reading an article saying that N^2 is a bit over the top, and suggesting a better formula, since the number of other nodes you actually connect with is less than the total of all nodes. Although the ability to connect with those other nodes is still valuable, it doesn't quite justify the ^2.

Anyway, I'll trot out the 'Information Rules' book recommendation once again. Sorry for the repeat.
In the case of the second argument -- Sugar as a more appropriate interface -- it may be more a case of "we're going to build what our customers will want, not what they think they want".

The XO has a screen that is not much larger than other ultra-compact notebooks, but with a resolution on par with full-size notebooks. If you run a standard Linux or Windows, any interface text or icons at the default size will be so small as to be illegible. If you crank up the interface DPI to an appropriate size, however, then you lose a lot of screen real estate to menus, toolbars, and statusbars -- something we take for granted now that we have 20-inch displays (just try using Word in a 640x480 window).

What the XO really needs is an interface like a kiosk or mobile device: something easy-to-use that aggressively conserves screen real estate. Sugar fills this role pretty well... the default installs of Linux or XP do not. Windows CE would have been a better choice than XP in this respect (and others), but it would presumably have been more work for Microsoft with less payoff, since CE has relatively few educational activities and doesn't run the "real" version of Office.
Do you know the current Kongbuck exchange rate, by chance?

Jokes aside, leaving the accounting to the market seems ripe for fraud. Finance is staid, but it's got a lot of years of experience behind it.
Girls who go to all-girls schools do better in math.

If I ever have a daughter I'll send her to an all-girls school. Boys are going to find her either way, and I'd prefer her "wanting" to do X or Y to be based on her skills and brains, not peer pressure.
I suggest calling this brave new world Rapture ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock#Plot_summary ).
From the article:

"Of course, one major role of government is to provide security, which would seem to be an issue on the open sea. But Friedman's not worried about defense beyond simple firearms because he thinks pirates will lack the financial incentive to attack the seasteads.

"More sophisticated pirates will take entire container ships that have tens of millions of dollars of cargo and 10 crew [members]," he said. "On a seastead, there's a much different crew-to-movable assets ratio."

In fact, his only worry is that a government will try to come calling and force their jurisdiction upon them. Toward that end, they are planning to fly a "flag of convenience" from a country that sells them, like Panama, to provide them with protection from national navies. "

Also, you should check out the website (http://www.seasteading.org) and read the FAQ. The founders have thought of the obvious questions.
you have many options - something exciting can come from anywhere and anytime, you dont need to join school or new job ... also if u can afford and survive financially then couple of months of vacation/traveling can re-juvenile you completely with may be something more creative and exciting for you.
Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur
you can get help writing a blog? :P

I know a lot of native english speakers whos english on their blog is crap. I wouldn't worry about it.
I would take a look at the constraints you have in place and those that you can and/or want to change. Resources are the natural place to start the assessment.

Provide some more information as to your current (as well as past) work experience, education, interests, etc. and I am sure the community can be more concrete with suggestions.
http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf

Yes, it is an enlightening article. After I read it the first time, I immediately began going through my old Complex Analysis and Physics textbooks. That was one of the few experiences I would describe as 'thunderstruck'.
this is extremely awesome. I've wanted this sort of functionality for a while to animate the evolution of some of my graphs like http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/AutomataGenerativeNetworks...
>Jokes aside, leaving the accounting to the market seems ripe for fraud. Finance is staid, but it's got a lot of years of experience behind it.

Where do you think accounting rules come from? Accounting practice comes from hundreds of years of custom and precedent, also known as "the market". It is only recently that accounting standards have been codified into law.
Facebook, star wars, and greek tragedy
Thank you. You've restored my faith in academia. You're doing God's work.
Attention, Projectileboy: upthread, you said

I, too, have never felt or seen bias against women in IT, once we're all adults.

I hope you enjoyed that while it lasted.
Move to Shenzhen. Doing that just blew my mind - I thought I was a person, but alone in Shenzhen for 4 weeks just permanently changed me.

You know how people talk about discovering yourself? I thought it was a myth, but when you go to a country alone and don't know the language, it really changes you.

I'm more focused now, more determined, more careful and by God, the money is just rolling in.
Digg - US Congressional leaders say they don’t rule out military ac
Oh, and third off: Scandinavia only refers to Denmark, Norway and Sweden. To include Iceland and Finland, which is what we're doing here, it's the Nordic countries.
Which is not the case in Iceland:

"All parents, who do not enjoy full contractual salary rights from their employers are paid by the Maternity/Paternity Leave Fund after they have been active in the domestic labour market for six consecutive months prior to the first day of the maternity/paternity leave."

http://www.invest.is/Doing-Business-in-Iceland/Labour-Force-...
There's a lot of voodoo going on that's called "Project Management" and "Systems Analysis", but isn't.

My logic?

a. OP claimed that his readers don't know what their users want. I am his reader. So I don't know what my users want.

b. I do know what my users want because I have conducted "proper" systems analysis. (Perhaps "sufficient" would be a better word that "proper".)

Therefore:

c. OP must not know what Systems Analysis really is or he never would have made his initial claim.

A few comments about some of the things needed to conduct "proper" systems analyis:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84977

I wonder how much of this OP did before he claimed that his readers didn't know what their users wanted. Often people claim that something can't be done because they have never done it.
I thought it might be a word-choice and cultural issue; I suspect in Europe 'noble' has different connotations because there are actual aristocracy doing things, occasionally altruistically. (Americans mainly think of aristocracy as a source of camp entertainment.) I meant 'noble' as 'deservedly outstanding; moral; admirable; honorable; generous'.

The journalists working for profit-making papers I have met do believe their work a noble calling, even when they feel cynical or compromised by the economic realities of their market. Though each has internalized biases one should be aware of, the NYTimes and WSJ are both great papers whose staff is usually fighting hard to arrive at the truth.
I really think you are wrong about google being a great job where people can easily be fulfilled.

But, I sure agree with you about corporations doing a lot of good for the world. Corporations are great.

The problem with corporations is in a combination of the shitty supreme court ruling that gives them all the rights of people, and the laws that say (unlike people) there only obligation is to maximize shareholder value. A lot of corporate abuse comes from them having all the legal rights of personhood but none of the moral responsibilities or ethics that come with personhood. We need corporations, but they should only get the rights of personhood if they agree to the ethical and moral responsibilities of personhood too. The problem isn't with corporations in and of themselves, it's this shitty legal context they exist in.

The other problem with corporations is that they can pass off costs to the public. For example, the true cost of oil includes the environmental damage from burning hydrocarbons, but this doesn't show up on the balance sheet. Or, if you prefer, the costs of bottling pepsi include water rights issues, yet bottlers often don't have to pay market price for this access, and may continue to get heavily subsidized water during a drought.

If these two problems were solved, corporations would be a lot better. I think people who attribute the problems corporations are confused and the problem is really a subtler issue around the particular way we allow corporations to selectively get the benefits of citizenship without the responsibilities, and to pass off costs like environmental, opportunity, and subsidies.
I don't think it will make much of a difference; people always succumb to peer pressure when they are with other people.

Another point to ponder on: would I accept a CS professorship at MIT? Hell, yeah! Would I accept one at Wellesley? I don't think so - I'll possibly end up being called a pussy.
I can confirm that you're not making it up.
I copied a technique from PG: if I write an essay, I'll send it aroud to a few of my friends, who I can trust to be critical if they don't find it particularly good. If they're not especially impressed, or if they don't have anything to say about it, I'll rewrite sections or keep it as a draft, waiting to finish it up later.
New Gladwell Book: "Outliers: Why Some People Succeed and Some Don't"
These pointless "women in computer science" articles really make my trigger finger itchy.
So I displayed bias against women in IT how exactly? Also, is bias always wrong? Would it be biased to say "women tend to have boobs"?
Which is more common: men stopping working to raise children or women stopping working to raise children?

You are being overly sensitive.
I think individual journalists are doing a good job and might have the right motivation, I just have never seen the actual newspapers to operate on that basis.
Agreed. I'd personally love to design a game world and story, but am not willing to devote 4 years of my life to just making something rudimentary.
MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition Winners
You're right, I missed Japan in the other group. I'm always suspicious of industrialized-vs-developing groupings because the intersection of industrialized and Western is so large. What do the numbers look like in Latin America, for instance? And Russia seems to have a lot of respect for scientists, in particular.

Basically, the example countries look cherry-picked, where those researchers lined up the percentages of women in physics by country, then generalized about the high and low ends of the scale, rather than starting with a proper hypothesis and testing it.
The point of the article is NOT that boys do better at math. The point is that girls who DO excel at math choose non-technical (or less technical) careers. Specifically, careers that involve more human interaction, or at least deal with living things in some form (biological sciences).
Discussion at Harvard regarding non-compete agreements
For anyone interested, a round table discussion of non-compete agreements and their impact at Harvard.
Geeks Crash a House of Fashion
In the U.S. many more women are now attending college than men. In large U.S. cities, for the first time ever, young women are out-earning men.

I just don't buy that (U.S.) women are receiving and accepting a message that they are "submissive." There is still some overhang from the previous male dominated culture, but it is being rapidly eroded and may have already disappeared for the generation now attending college and/or entering the work force.

I am curious to see data indicating a trend in the opposite direction.
So basically google is an extortion racket where people can't find you on the internet unless you either pay outlandish SEO fees to people to battle against google for tricking it into displaying your results high, or pay google for ads?

And maintaining this system (to googles benefit, not the consumers) is mostly a battle of fighting off the SEO guys so that your advertising money goes to google, or you don't get seen. There is honor and dignity in this endless, pointless fight? That doesn't sound like meaningful work that will satisfy people with a burning desire to change the world. That sounds like extortion. (Pay us ads, pay your nerds to fight with our nerds about SEO, or get kicked off the block).

Obviously, there are tons of people for whatever reason just want a job they can live with. That's fine. I'm not saying everyone should quit google or anyone who works at google is a soulless spineless fuck or anything like that.

But these google guys are at the edge of what's possible, and some of the brightest folks around. I'm not talking about finding a great job you can live with. I'm talking about the people who have both the desire and ability to set the world on fire. Those are the people google wants and can't hold.

I completely agree not all work has to be soul affirming to be worth doing. But there are some people who won't settle for less than truly meaningful work. These are the people google both needs, and can't hang onto.
My data belongs to me. Just like my email address, or my phone number. Any system I can't get my information back out of is a total non-starter.

I want to see the social network decentralized. Give the members control. The services can act as stewards but I don't want to be locked in to their decisions.
The only person qualified to determine if something being told to another is a lie....is someone who KNOWS the absolute truth. WHO would that be? Some things we all know is untrue and other things cannot be proven one way or another..i.e. religion.
Perhaps the comparison is off-base but I have not read any mention of the Principality of Sealand in relation to this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
I actually like the grad school idea. Being in a nice relaxed college atmosphere while working on interesting problems would be perfect. All you would need is to not lose sight of what you got there for in the first place.
Muxtape is business time.

points for the concords.
Web 2.0 Sneakers: Hacker News
Why shenzhen? I spent some time in India and it was awe inspiring on one level but it was also depressing having to deal with such overwhelming incompetency.
It totally depends on your situation, but this is what I did:

1) Slashed expenses. I traded the '03 bimmer for a '96 Minivan, pawned off the bachelor pad, moved in with some friends. Upside: total freedom. Downside: Asking a girl out when you drive a minivan sucks. Then again it's really good at filtering out materialistic women and I've gotten a lot closer to women who care about big ideas instead of impressing their other materialistic friends. This was incredibly painful to do. It was only AFTER I got rid of my stuff that I realized how much bondage I was in and how much I was buying into the same consumer bullshit that I pretended to hate.

2) Stopped moonlighting. I saved up some money and have resisted every urge to accept contract work. That just makes you lazy. As much as it stresses me out I create as much financial pressure on myself that I HAVE to make this startup profitable as quickly as possible.

3) Picked one idea. I'm an idea person. I have too many of them. Idea's are not the problem, it's commitment and focus. So just pick your best idea and don't think about anything else. Limit brainstorming unless it relates to how you are going to reach profitability.

4) Got a friend to go hardcore with me. When you are a subversive little jackass trying to do a startup that nobody gives a rip about it's easy to get discouraged. I don't think I could be doing this without a friend who is drinking the kool-aid.

5) Read founders at work. On a daily basis I'm flooded with uncertainty about direction and focus. Knowing that everyone is on the same rollercoaster between im-a-genius and im-an-idiot is really helpful.

I just sent out the first two invoices this morning... woo!
My fiancee is a psych researcher; this is just what she's told me (via rant) a number of times. Plenty of studies showing significant gender differences show up on sagepub.com, but the findings usually have culture mixed in as well, and they aren't nearly as strong as Cosmo and the rest of pop culture would have us believe.

More precisely, the variation within a gender group is much larger than the variation between genders.
Um...you're going with...um...newspapers and pharmaceuticals as examples of noble corporations?

Um...

OK. I hate to break this too you, but newspapers haven't had shit to do with the truth since ownership rules relaxed enough to turn them into propaganda tools for whatever rich asshole with old money buys. Newspapers are mostly against the truth. When they do report whats true (about things the old money rulers don't care about), it's only so they can lie later, when the money does care.

And there is a special place in hell for the scum fucks who set up pharmaceutical pricing and patenting schemes where AIDS patients all over the world are dying because they can't get access to medications factories in their own countries could make.

And most work in pharmaceuticals is in reformulating drugs where the patent is about to expire and manipulating studies to claim a slight benefit over the previous generation, and then aggressively advertising it to consumers who are completely uneducated about medications while unethically pushing doctors to use it.

Those are really really bad examples of corporations that do noble work.