skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's really hard to see a completely symmetrical map that's played by people. I don't think the choice of the map was his worst fault. I think the biggest problem is that he didn't do a series of 1x1 matches. Although, by what he said, protoss should win because they'd just rush and fight each other. Or maybe not, because their armies could meet in the middle of the map or something. Anyhow he should do something like:

Terran x Terran

Terran x Zerg

Terran x Protoss

Zerg x Zerg

Zerg x Protoss

Protoss x Protoss
Well, that's kind of the whole point David... and yes, we do think that.

Kind regards,
Hongli Lai
Ninh Bui
Phusion.nl
It just sounds as if you should switch jobs. Certainly not all men/IT departments are like that.
Wow . that was the most well written thing I've read this week.
They can convince major brands to advertise there. The problem is, unlike traditional media ads, web based advertisers can quantify how much bang for their buck they are getting (click throughs, etc).

Turns out that blanket, weakly-targeted advertising just doesn't perform that well, and companies get explicit feedback from these networks on just how bad the typical ad really is in terms of ROI.
Fortunately, unless they were promoted or given a bonus for signing the agreement, it's pointless:

_Provide a Benefit to the Employee_

Next, you must provide a benefit to the employee in exchange for his or her promise not to compete against you. Making a job offer contingent on signing a noncompete agreement probably satisfies this requirement, since the employee is receiving a benefit (a job) in exchange for the promise. It's more difficult to provide an existing employee with a benefit, but generally, coupling the agreement with a promotion or a raise will do the trick.

http://tinyurl.com/yvaqb4
One of the point I've tried to make is that what seems strong or weak is at times a subjective judgment too.

But you're absolutely right. We need to pitch more. And we'll need to listen, and ponder, and most of all, build.

We have in fact located to SV (or, Berkeley, rather). If you have any tips as to which angel groups would be most suitable to approach, we'd love to hear from you.
google should buy remember the milk (assuming it's for sale). their GMail integration is simply awesome.
I agree 100%. I have had several ideas and some people even like them, but in the end I have not been able to find others who share my passion. I am not a developer, but I have some development background and I am a tech geek so I follow trends and have been able to see things coming, but having the business acumen is not enough. Woz needed Jobs and Jobs needed Woz.
Facebook is not the next google for the simple fact that everyone is saying that it is. The Next Big Thing usually slips under the radar until it becomes completely dominant.
Now I feel dumb :(
ahh, i'm not a wannabe-quant, just a recovering former hedge fund employee.
Do note that this is not the first attempt at this, however it looks. My own system (I say "my" loosely, it's public domain and open source) SwitchPipe: http://switchpipe.org/ is already in widespread usage, but its focus is a little different.
I have to say that this blog post is a fantastic summary of a lot of the challenges to concurrent programming past and present.

I sort of wish that there was at least brief discussion of things like software transactional memory or compare and swap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compare_and_swap
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_transactional_memory
what bout your former colleagues at Scribd? seems like they may know a person or two.

when do we get to see a preview?
Why does Facebook need to focus on "getting paid. Fast."? It's not like they have any difficulty getting funding. Obviously they need to figure out how to make money in the long run, but it's not like they're going to run out of cash any time soon.
I get an sense that a YC rejection is quite a bit different than the average rejection (not getting into Google, not getting into Harvard, not getting into the finals of a competition, not getting a date, etc.). The fact is, getting into YC really _is_ a big deal and really is life changing.

All the reading, obsessing, thinking that we as Hacker News participants do, build up hopes and expectations in an unhealthy way. But then again who can drink the YC kool-aid and not get drawn in?

Anyhow, cheers to you for being brave and making a go at it.
You don't have to delete the account to stop using it.
You'll start hearing the same thing again and again. Expect much more focus on how you're going to get to what market than you would for a yc app. Google "angel forum" for starters, make a list and start applying. Email me for more specifics. In car on iPhone right now.
I get your point, but given the current economic climate and the understanding that the you can't predict when "the cat'll be out of the bag" in terms of when the valley realizes they're living on funding, the faster they find a way to bring in revenue, the better it is for them.
That's a good idea. We'll ask them.

We'll be able to show a preview when it's ready for everyone else, though earlier private showings remain possible. I hope not to jinx myself, but I think it will be fairly soon, within the month, or by early summer.
I don't think it is, but I saw a test case here claiming it is:

http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/325/program...
yeah it appears doable, it doesn't appear to be googles intent to lock people in (but then I am sure it wasn't the intent of hypercard either).

Its still up to the diligence of the people who write the app. The problem with hypercard, was that the people using the app were the ones that created the cool stuff, and the people maintaining hypercard wouldn't/couldn't keep it going for them.
Perhaps something like the Affero GPL would have been more appropriate in that case? Maybe you have access to better legal advice than I do, but my reading of the GPL is that if you're not redistributing it, you're not required to give back your modifications, and I'm not sure that running mod_rails on your own servers counts as redistribution. Perhaps you're simply aiming to stop people from selling binary-only versions, but that doesn't seem like nearly as likely a scenario as some hosting provider boasting of a mod_rails with extra secret sauce that they're not sharing.

I'm not a license zealot, and think they all have their places, but I should also say a word or two in favor of the BSD/Apache style licenses: in the Apache Software Foundation, we don't rely on licenses to "keep people in line" (in terms of proprietary forks), but a strong, diverse community that has the potential to outdevelop anyone who tries to make a proprietary fork. They realize that if they fork, they're going to fall behind the community driven version, which is moving faster. Of course, that's not possible in all cases, but I think that a potentially important project like mod_rails certainly has a good shot at attracting that kind of community. You guys probably know more about the people in the rails hosting market than I do though, so maybe your fears are based on a concrete threat.
That is why i said it seems a little late. I remember stabbing my eyes out when i first got into rails once i tried deploying stuff, back in the fastcgi/lighttpd days.

btw, switchpipe is going to rule the world in a few months, the support for all the other frameworks looks awesome.
To be fair, fastcgi wasn't /too/ bad IF you actually had it running well at least once g and that varied incredibly from machine to machine, alas. It did use a similar underlying mechanism to most of these other alternatives, just in a rather messy way.

I don't think SwitchPipe will rule anything, but perhaps once it's up on Github (instead of SVN) and I release the next version, more baby steps can be made. I'd love to make it even more simple somehow, and perhaps port it to a much faster base (probably Python).
So its ok for them to do this? but if you do the same against google (scraping results) - presumably Bad Things happen?
Coding maniac seeking same in Chicago
Hi, I'm the founder of lonelylearner.com and I'm looking for a Chicago-area partner with whom I can work on the project. I'm looking for a hacker and also a (perhaps separate) gregarious, people-friendly marketing/usability person. Please watch the screencast on the main page if you want some introductory info, and please keep in mind that the current site is a rough draft. I started coding Lonely Learner in my spare time a few months ago and I'm now going to start adding new features and increasing usability very fast. I have a list of (IMO, innovative) features that I plan on adding by the end of June, and I also plan on having a German version running by the end of July. At that point I plan on pitching the site to foreign language departments in high schools, colleges and universities. Ultimately, I want to make it plain to anyone learning a foreign language that they would be foolish to not use my site.

I am pretty smart and am one class shy of a degree in Economics with minors in CS and Math from the University of Chicago. I am a versatile maniac when it comes to coding and fiercely dedicated to making a successful start-up. I am working hard to overcome myself and carve out space for my imagination, to study my thoughts and reactions, and to solemnly search for the right combination of factors that will make my site successful.

Want to join me? Please contact me off-list.

Adam (bezeichnung)
"Get Real" model?
"Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell." "The Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allen Poe

"He said they have an ongoing bet for a case of beer regarding the chamber. If someone can last 45 minutes in there by themselves with the lights off, then they get a case of beer. If I remember correctly no one has been able to make it past a half-hour yet.

Basically with such a lack of sound the body and mind start freaking out. Imagine your heart beat being the loudest thing in the room. He can go into much more detail than I, but I found that extremely interesting."

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank
Ruby 1.9 Standard Library Changes
Facebook is special in the sense that it is not going away. Ever since we climbed down from trees (and even before then) we have been obsessed with social hierarchy, staying on top, in touch and in control. Facebook is just another way to interact with our fellow humans.

It may not have the profound, society shaking, impacts that Google has, but it does cater to a fundamental human desire - societal interaction. And, as such, it is special and not going away.
Lawsuit seeks to prevent Large Hadron Collider from destroying earth
Oops, email addresses aren't visible through profiles. join('adu', 'ston', '@', 'gmail.com').
You will be more likely to get funding from angels if you have launched and can show some sort of growth. So if you can get to launch on the money you have, do that. Then find angels by asking acquaintances who work for startups to introduce you to their angel investors. They will do it if they think highly of your product.
Is it just me...or is this a little over-the-top? This essay makes PG out to be the second coming of Christ. YCombinator is great...but it's not the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Keep building your product and pounding the pavement. As Coach K would say...next play.
Yeah I agree, it's just a matter of balance I guess.
Yes and yes. If you are an employee I'd start working on that resume. If you are a founder - sorry.
Nothing's wrong with that. I think he's just commenting that it's uncommon (or slightly unfair) to think of designers in terms of what languages they might know.

That being said, if you find someone with the technology background, more power to you. It's probably a better idea to focus on a designer who isn't afraid to work with any technology. Talent and willingness to dive in strike me as much more useful "cofounding" qualities than experience with specific technologies.

Best of luck on your search!
Great response. Can you add this info to the original post? (I don't recall if it times out or not.)
I don't disagree with his main idea, but I really find it hard to believe that AIM and most cell phones are open platforms; though someone can prove me wrong.
Harvard starts teaching open source
If Microsoft were paying people to take its product then it wouldn't have a business model :) What causes you to think that they pay other people to distribute it?
Just noticed that the "Passenger blog":http://izumi.plan99.net/blog/index.php/2008/04/11/phusion-pa... mentions that Dreamhost has been beta testing Passenger. If thats true, and Dreamhost rolls it out (soon!), then Rails is going to become as ubiquitous as PHP for hobby-coders that don't enjoy playing sysadmins. I'm probably one of them.
LinkedIn as Headhunting Tool - Watch Out Monster, Dice!
The point about work experience not helping that much is so true... I would have been better off building stuff right off the bat.
Well, the founders at least can't be blamed by the VCs if the company implodes.

Please come back and update is on the story if you stick with it there. Might help some of us later.
http://37signals.com/getreal/
I wouldn't want to elevate PG as a demigod. Yet upon rejection this was, in many ways, how I felt. This essay comes from an analysis of these feelings. The understanding I came to later represents how I now see things. I'm proud to say we are moving on. But I'd hoped to share my experience, for others currently going through rejection, and for future, aspiring entrepreneurs.
Yeah, I've had good luck with mod_fcgid, actually. I don't have that much traffic, but I like the fact that the software takes care of setting up and tearing down new instances of the application server, rather than having to take a wild guess at how many mongrel instances might be needed per virtual host. This is something that mod_rails also promises to do well.
"Worry is the misuse of imagination". Keep moving forward, individuals like you are moving me towards the tipping point of venturing and executing ideas of my own
if you have a great idea, build a prototype. that's the great equalizer -- if you have working code, or better yet, traction, then most concerns about being a "proven" team evaporate.

if your code isn't quite ready, build a screencast, then submit it to news.yc. doing this was probably instrumental in our eventual YC acceptance. (this lets you convey the cool parts of your idea in a way you can control even if there are a lot of missing pieces.)

otherwise, if you've only got a team and a hunch, you're in this _giant_ pile of "eh who knows if it'll work, who knows if they're good, but maybe" applications (many of which ultimately fail), and it's basically a crapshoot. yc gets enough apps w/ 1) amazing people 2) amazing products or 3) amazing traction to avoid having to place these kinds of shaky bets.

the more risk (product risk, people risk, market risk) you can eliminate on your own, the better you'll look to _any_ investor (and the more equity you'll keep for yourselves.)

obviously, there's a catch-22 that to prove some of these things you need initial capital, but for most software startups it just means locking yourself up and hacking out a prototype and letting it rip to a few people.

then just apply next cycle -- mercifully, it's not like college admissions where you (generally) only get one shot. (my first yc app was rejected a year before ultimately getting in.)
Why do people keep repeating that FB is 'worth' $15 Billion?

Is it an American thing for self-delusions?

FB as a business has the same credibility as a Washington Mutual AAA rated CDO.
They aren't, but it's a largely unenforceable and really pretty stupid provision in a field with such a massive difference in productivity between workers.

Sure, I suppose you can require that a company pay some posted "prevailing wage", but that that hardly tells you this is the wage an individual would get if he or she were free to find another employer, join or found a startup, or enter a different field entirely.
Is their search url listed in their robots.txt?
I have been an entrepreneur for the last fifteen years and in retrospect, the two things that are hardest to learn are the following ...

1) How to embrace rejection ... not just accept it but embrace it. Most smart engineers prefer to avoid rejection by spending more time on developing technology or products and they want to get it as perfect as possible before presenting it to a potential user or customer for critique. This is wrong. Get over rejection. Embrace it. Do it early. Any chance you can, get in front of people who are not your family or your friends and get real feedback. You don't learn anything from positive feedback. Your learn a whole lot more from negative feedback.

2) How to develop a sensitivity to other people's inconvenience. For everything that is new, there will always be early adopters. It is easy to let initial success gets to your head. But to going beyond the initial veneer, your product or services have to simplify people's life, not just the smart or motivated people, but the normal and lazy people.

As my base jumping friend told me once, after about 500 jumps, you will start to realize how cold it is up there. This is just the beginning. Suck it up.
> Your learn a whole lot more from negative feedback.

Negative feedback can be more honest. In every criticism (especially if it's someone who you don't have an existing relationship with), there is usually a nugget of truth.

"If you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig"
Send me an email if you live around Chicago.
H1Bs are better than nothing, but they're kind of exploitive, bounding the employee to a specific employer. If there's a market demand for those immigratn skills, let all employers bid for it, rather than giving those who master the H1B process cheap indentured workers. (The article recognizes this, acknowledging more green cards are an even better policy.)

Any non-criminal who can pay their own food, shelter, health costs should be allowed in. If the number of slots must be rationed, as a political matter, at least ration them rationally, via an economic/auction process, so idiocrats have to see the foregone revenue caused by the caps that pander to incumbents/"sooners".

Maybe we could outsource immigration legislation to higher-quality, lower-cost overseas legislators?
They'll have difficulty getting funding at some point in the future without a down round, which nobody wants.
Because that's their market value based on recent investments.
I know of many apps not built by AOL that use AIM. Meebo, Trillian, Pidgin, Adium, etc. I don't think they meant it to be an open platform (until fairly recently) but it became one.

I meant the phone system. Individual cell phones are not necessarily platforms.
I agree. In startups, there is no worse experience than putting lipstick on a pig. Not only is it a big waste of effort, but it annoys the crap out of the pig.
Google did that for sure.
Nerds To Valleywag: Stay Off Our Site!
YC != 42?
It's not that simple -- it depends state-by-state and case-by-case. But California, especially, and New York are both very much for the employee's right to compete in such matters. I understand Nevada and Texas, not as much.
Seems strange that you wouldn't have just looked when asking that question (less characters to type at least). Lots of things disallowed.

http://google.com/robots.txt
I agree with the Economist, and PG, that the US immigration system is very poor.

However, any recommendation to expand the H1B program must include a recognition that this program severely curtails the freedom of the skilled workers who come here. By and large, consuting, startups, and other non-corporate sponsored work is out of the question.

This is why I find it so irritating when people point to Andy Grove, Sergey Brin, and other immigrants as evidence of the value of the H1B. Don't they know these people wouldn't have been allowed to start a company under the terms of the H1B visa?

The H1B says "we'll allow you to come here to work for Oracle, but we won't allow you to come here to start a company that competes with Oracle."
I agree with the Economist, and PG, that the US immigration system is dysfunctional, and keeps out top contributors.

However, any recommendation to expand the H1B program must include a recognition that this program severely curtails the freedom of the skilled workers who come here. By and large, consuting, startups, and other non-corporate sponsored work are out of the question for H1B holders who hope to get a green card.

This is why I find it so irritating when people point to Andy Grove, Sergey Brin, and other immigrants as evidence of the value of the H1B. Don't they know these people wouldn't have been allowed to start a company under the terms of the H1B visa?

The H1B says "we'll allow you to come here to work for Oracle, but we won't allow you to come here to start a company that competes with Oracle."
Matt reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes
Interesting post from the Xoogler perspective. Thanks.
Does Twitter Actually Listen to its Users?
Not sure if anyone is aware of the minor Twitter Facebok App rebellion. All Twitter updates start with "[Your Name] is twittering". Quite a few ppl have been lobbying against it, but twitter doesnt seem to have budged.
and how is the phone system an open plataform with regards to your "social graph"? and IM services?
It seems there has been a minor rebellion on FB about the Twitter app
I think his thesis actually focuses on using infrared tracking to project light onto moving targets. I guess it's still hacking a gaming system but I think that project is actually quite a bit more complicated than the white board.
An extra resources version of Blood Bath, maybe? It also eliminates the randomness of expansions.
If you believe Vista/Windows is collapsing, doesn't it validate Yahoo's resistance to combining with an even more doomed ship?

And so isn't TechCrunch's conclusion, including the "scorched earth" rant from yesterday which called a Yahoo-Microsoft combination "the only reasonable outcome", kind of silly? Reasonable for MSFT, perhaps, but not necessarily anyone else.

TechCrunch: good for scoops, atrocious for measured analysis.
"This essay makes PG out to be the second coming of Christ."

Despite the hyperbole, I'd argue that a lot of HN users and YC alums express similar sentiments.
Twitter is easy to explain: "It's a site for blogging, but posts are limited to 140 characters." A good way to sell it is that it's fun: you can post that "chicken is yummy" without having to write an essay about it. The language of it is easy to learn: @ means at. Maybe people sign up and leave, but I don't think these reasons explain that.