skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Credit to google for the openmindness, but 1) Google is doing this for its own interests of course. 2) this does not change the fact that the main credit is due to the guy that wrote the code that could have used his time to produce something not useful for the external community.
"Everyone on the list had two qualities: they cared almost excessively about their work, and they were absolutely honest."

Honesty is a quality I really admire in you myself, PG. Be careful not to work too hard though! Thanks for another good read!
I never knew Control-Command-D would define a word you're hovering over. Something small like that is enough to make me consider switching back to Safari.
I've been using this for the past few days. It works well for me, though I should add the caveat that I would normally use emacs anyway so the learning curve wasn't exactly steep:)
The last thing we need is more words that work like that.
Well it's been said here a few times but if I try to look at your request from the perspective of a developer you're trying to hire, I'd probably expect alot more equity than you're willing to give.

For example, consider you work 40 hrs a week and you want me to work 10 hours a week, for simplicity sake. Since I'm working 25% as much as you I'd expect 25% the equity that you have. So if its you and a partner with 50% stakes working 40 hrs each ontop of my 10 hrs then I'd expect 9% of the company because that's how much of the effort I'm contributing.
M4DBI: A new Ruby ORM Library
>Auto-completion in Firefox requires the use of the Down Arrow key to select something from the list of suggestions. In Safari you can just use Return to accept the first suggestion.

I HATE when return picks the first item from a match-list. How the hell do I just type what I want to type?
Nike+ SportBand Works Without iPod
Perens warns that a vendor-dominated OSI board might be tempted to offer a seat to Microsoft
Craigslist To Tim White: Surrender The Blog URL
I need your signature to help me protect Open Source
Something Important Is On The Horizon In The Music Business
Jedit usually, but an editor is an editor. As long as it looks nice and has line numbering, it's fine IMHO
Decisions Without Data are Guesses
let it come, competition never hurt anyone
I would put Paul Graham on my list. :)
Google Street View Gets Sued; How Boring?
Your instinct - that it looks like a bunch of bureaucracy - is exactly right. These courses are designed to churn out IBM or EDS "consultants", so they can do CYA -they followed all the rules, so they are safe.
This is what I was looking for.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152805
The brevity does make him seem a bit stoic.
So the Karma train goes.
Kaczynski - brilliant, misunderstood, and a psychopath.

Anarcho-primitivism is a odd ideal for someone posting on a technology site.
* Sherlock Holmes: Because he was the coolest guy ever, even if he was fictional.

* Bobby Fischer: The world had never seen such monomania before and probably never will again. (Of course, he went mad in the end.)

* Lennon and McCartney: The greatest popular music composers since the Gershwins.

* Kurt Gödel: The greatest logician of all time.

* Bach and Chopin: The greatest composers for the keyboard of all time.
Virginia, and no, it's a public high school. There's no tuition, although you do have to pass a test to get in.
Yes -- if you're serious about starting your own business, you will never need anyone's approval or permission (except your wife's, if applicable!).

The community part of YC would indeed be cool, but personally, I'm going to start my company without YC. Moving across the country for 3 months isn't really practical after you have a wife and kids.

But the process is more are or less the same -- you just need to look for a community of peers and mentors yourself, if you can find them. And you need to work even harder to get yourself noticed by people who can fund you.
good not great article, horrible title
Ask YC: Submitting News in Spanish
Hi, I've seen many interesting tech news in Spanish, so I wanted to ask you if you'd be interested in reading those news.

Thanks.
yeah; it seemed very beautiful, didn't it?
They also did try to learn and hack:

http://blog.harjtaggar.com/?p=37
Here's a tip: Read one novel by Tom Robbins, and then if a female asks, always say that you just read it last week.
It's both.

All of our web stuff is done with rails, flash (as3) and javascript.

Everything else (video servers, chat servers, the search engine, and many other smaller things) is done in python - mainly because of the twisted library.
erm, this is Hacker News and personally I believe this is a good place to announce this
"Everyone of my generation has had their favorite radio stations. Everyone of my kid’s generation will have their favorite web music services. There will be hundreds of them."

Why would there be hundreds of them? Unlike radio stations, web streaming services aren't limited to one song at a time. With network effects it seems a few services would dominate.

(Otherwise a good article. I'm typing this while listening to thefeelgood.com)
Oil & gas don't turn off at night. There will always be a need for stored energy, whether gasified coal, petroleum, hydrogen, or batteries.
What's to stop Apple from adopting this business model? They already have the music database, and the streaming capability (for song previews).

I'm not commenting on the value of this business model, just that the article seems to imply that Apple will be left in the dust when the music industry goes this way.
I think this has legs. Could be positioned and designed something along the lines of http://www.shoulddothis.com/ or even http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ (but this service would be 'doesthissitesuckorisitjustme.com). It's not 'extortion' to companies subscribing. It's valuable and a cheap form of research. Has to be presented 'nicely' of course!
Concentrating On The Important Things - Solar Thermal Power
Many software engineering methodologies are built so that you can take a large team of mediocre engineers and set them on their merry way. This is a fact of life for the majority of the software industry.

When you start a startup, you probably (and should) have a small team of excellent hackers, so you can get by with just doing smart and logical things instead of following so many rules.

Growing your startup and engineering team does change how small your team is, and how excellent your hackers are. Add process as needed, shake and bake.
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3791

The existing plants prove that concentrated solar power is practical, but costs must decrease. Electricity from solar thermal plants currently costs between US$0.13 per kilowatt hour (kWh) and US$0.17 per kWh, depending on the location of the plant and the amount of sunshine it receives. Conventional power plants generate electricity for between US$0.05 and US$0.15 per kilowatt hour (not including any carbon taxes or cap and trade related costs) but in most places it's below US$0.10 (wind power generally costs around US$0.08 per kWh).

I wonder how long it's going to take solar-thermal to gain traction. The economics seem a lot better than just plain photo-voltaic solar that's been pushed for years. And certain types of solar-thermal have an energy reservoir, so you can have peak load + base load capabilities, unlike wind power.
Software as a Service is just a buzzword.

Software used to be something you buy for a lot of money in a physical package.

Software as a Service is sold by license for less money over a specific period of time and used over the web.
Infochimps.org: Free Redistributable Rich Data Sets
How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure)
There can be many successful online radio sites, catering to different tastes. I never use one and only one. Sometimes I use pandora, sometimes musicovery, sometimes somafm, sometimes imported digital. Depends on my mood, and what I am looking for.
Alan Turing - Be true to yourself.

Epictetus - Perspective is everything.

Danc - Mastery through practice.
A grad student I know said he might work at his friends' very secret startup this summer. All he said is that it'll revolutionize the music business, it has the full support of several record companies, they got half a million from vc's just for the idea, and apparently radiohead is tangentially involved. I don't know if it's good or bad to have so many cooks in the kitchen before they've written a single line of code... but anyway, maybe it's something like fred's talking about.
"These services are coming to mobile phones, probably in the next year we’ll all be listening to pandora or last.fm in the gym on our phone instead of our limited library on our iPod."

This is already here. You can get XM Radio, MobiRadio on ATT and Sprint phones, and Pandora (on Sprint only so far), and there are many services (verizon has it's own streaming music).
Uh, Paul, I assume that you mean Robert Morris the younger? Or his dad?

If the younger, I'd think you're well equipped with at least one example where he was less that perfectly right about something.
The impact of what mark spencer has done single handedly ( afaik he hacked the original version in C by himself over a couple of months) is freaking huge. I would rank his to be the second biggest contribution to open source, just after linux.

I have been personally testament to the havoc that this disruptive piece of code has wreaked in the telecommunications business. I worked as an angel member in my previous startup, where we built software used to handle the call dialling and management in call centres. Also known as a 'dailer',the software has a huge market in India as it is central to operating any call centre. Before we got in, the space was dominated by players like Avaya, who used to lug around with their huge expensive pieces of hardware (used to manage the real time routing and call logging). Asterisk changed all of it and made possible for small startups to enter the fray.

Proprietary and expenseive hardware solutions are now all but extinct in the small to medium call centre space and softwares driven by Asterisk rule the roost. Distributed systems running on Astersisk are now slowly challenging the last bastion of expensive hardware telephony systems - the big call centre market.

Unlike the OS business, free and open source is definitely set on winning this game - and it all began by one hacker wanting to test the limits of some lean, mean and pointer-ridden C code..
No, that would have been Lord Haw Haw and Ezra Pound who made propaganda broadcasts for the fascists.

It wasn't as though Wodehouse had shaken hands with Hitler. He merely talked about what his internment was like, and he only made about five broadcasts. Even so, I think he was incredibly naïve of him to do this, given that by 1940, the Germans hadn't simply crossed the line into uncivilized conduct, they had gleefully flown over it with flags raised and fireworks shooting.
Efficiency is important - it's what lets you put the panels some place other than a giant solar farm in the middle of no where.

Consider house-top installations. If each only produces 100 watts, the cost of the inverter and utility hookup will make it untenable even if the panels are free. (Inverter cost/watt goes down pretty fast with capacity and most of the hookup cost is independent of the capacity.)

There's also a huge psychological boost in being able to be energy neutral.
no comprendre
The article amounts to saying one thing, streaming is getting popular.

But so what? People will still buy a house even if they can also rent it. Renting and owning will always coexist.

Also, if streaming gets popular, then a million people will be doing it. So, instead of putting up a mp3 for download, now people will use some streaming service to stream it. What do the label companies get? They have the same piracy and control issue like before.
I love firebug for DOM inspection and CSS prototyping. But I want to do debugging inside same enviroment where I write code. The main reason why I use Aptana is their remote debugger which connects IDE to firebug and allows you do debugging inside the IDE.
I mean the younger. And of course his sw has bugs, like anyone's might (though fewer, actually). I'm talking about statements, not choices.
But that's an artificial distinction. There's no stopping somafm or imported digital from hosting other types of music (other than servers).
Aztec Math Decoded, Reveals Woes of Ancient Tax Time
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=155286
Walt Mossberg loves AppleTV...and 3G iPhone in 2 months!
Using pg's criteria, the first one that comes to mind is Eugine Hutz (front man Gogol Bordello).

Like others pg mentioned, he writes the music for himself not for the audiences. The sincerity and lack of compromise really comes through - his music is an unconventional blend of gypsy and punk (go to a concert and for the first time ever you'll see a mosh pit in front of an accordionist), many of his songs have a lot of humour (something painfully lacking from most music), he sings half in Ukrainian etc and yet him and Gogol Bordello have achieved a fair amount of success.

I know it may sound a bit stupid since its 12 year olds would usually have music heroes, but I'm 24 and he's the only musician I'd ever call a hero.

It may be just me, but his music, lyrics and actions all all exude the same message: do what you love doing, be a decent human being, be sincere and you'll do alright. And that's an awesome message, regardless of what you choose to do in life.
Who are my heroes?

1. morally, I wonder what Buffy would do.

2. for showing that it's possible to succeed without selling out, Whedon.

3. for challenging me to stick to my beliefs, J.D. Salinger.

4. for a glimpse of honor, compassion, and beauty, Harper Lee.

5. Anne Frank.

One German-born girl, three American writers, and one fictional character. On the surface
they don't look like super-heroes, but all have affected the way I think and view the world.

What's sobering is that none of my heroes are on anybody else's list.
I'm all for alternative energy, but if the only chance of it becoming cost competitive with coal is to artificially jack up the price of the current system through caps, I doubt Congress will pass it through. Even if they do, once it shows up in the consumers bills, there will be hell to pay.

The best approach is to increase the efficiency through science and let the technology naturally be adopted like every other innovation that wins in the marketplace. I'm still for the cap, but if that is the linchpin for adoption to take hold widespread, something must be wrong with the product.
It seems Netbeans now has very good JS support [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=155670]
Textmate also makes it easy to pipe your text through any command line program... want to sort a few lines? Select the lines, Command-Option-R and enter "sort". It's quite handy.
Of course efficiency is important. 10% is horrible by today's standards. They are up to 20%, which would save you half of the panels cutting your costs in half. The cost (or revenue) of an installation is directly connected to the efficiency of your solar-technology. If you only have a fixed space to build it in, and your panels are twice as efficient, you make twice as much power and twice as much energy.
Rough summary of the argument: When you need to make a decision, use the data you have available to make the one most consistent with achieving your goal. Also, the plural of anecdote is not data.

...however...

He misses the fact that it can be very hard to gather a sufficient sample of data for a complex set of variables. If you are designing a web site there are literally hundreds of choices to make. You can't reasonably expect to test all of your decisions before making them, or else you will be paralyzed by delay.

This leaves you with a second option of mocking up a couple of choices and see which ones are liked best, leaving you potentially with the best of a bad bunch.

Or, my preference, option three: Pick a couple of design champions who will tear any design to shreds and make you really justify your choices in terms of work flow and user interaction.

Generally you can assume that you aren't stupid, and you can figure out the right choices to make, however you won't always notice you need to do so unless you are being forced to justify your decisions by a grumpy critic.
.CSV: The dangers of "human terrain mapping"
The point of a cap is that it places a legally binding limit on the total amount of CO2 that can be released into the atmosphere. Alternative energy achieving price parity with coal is just the natural result of internalizing the negative externality of our currently broken system.
I tried Safari and switched back to Firefox because I couldn't live without all the Greasemonkey scripts I rely upon to make the web suck less.

De gustibus non est disputandum.
You have to backspace the autocompleted text, but it doesn't appear immediately, so you have to either:

- Type what you want to type and race to hit return, or
- Wait a moment for the text to appear so you can hit backspace.

The whole experience is really frustrating, and easily one of my least-favorite features of Safari. It probably contributes to my tendency to Google sites rather than just entering URLs I already know by heart.
Vulnerable Vulnerability Databases
waiting for jython support. hopefully it will come soon.
Price isn't proportional to efficiency. Making a solar panel that's 10% efficient instead of 20% efficient might require only 1/20th as much silicon. Also, the current limiting factor is the cost of manufacturing, not the cost of land. That's why companies are racing to build a new generation of low-efficiency low-cost photovoltaics.
I sent her an email, I'll let you know if I get a reply. Failing that this might involve, god forbid, going to a library.
totally agree with the article. I've stuck with APL for years. Can do anything I want efficiently.

BTW, building a web framework using APL. Anyone care to help?
my first thought (after reading the first page) for some reason was about athletics. needless to say, there are some pretty big stereotypes specifically regarding sports (in the US at least)
A better description of this might be "destroys a $7B market"
How to retire at 28 and travel the world (or start a startup)
Incidentally, the retire gambit works if you're bootstrapping a startup as well.
I ran a flop house in the Canary Islands, and you can too
Verizon reveals plans for airwaves
If you are competing, you could consider finding some way to merge and work together on it. On the other hand, maybe not. It's just something to consider just in case.
Gates: Windows 7 may come 'in the next year'
Thanks for the link, it is interesting. I think I am going to opt for the rss plan.
Is Computer Science the New Latin?
Thanks for the link, I am going to try mixing it up and see how it looks.
thx ;-)
Has there been a year's worth of progress since the article was written?
and he's wearing a fantastic t-shirt
Looks like College Board is dead set on guaranteeing that I should have a job for a long time.
In no particular order:

Richard Feynman - For his integrity and for insisting on skepticism and rigor in everything.

Robert Heinlein - Along with John W. Campbell, he brought science fiction away from ray-guns and bug-eyed monsters and made it interesting and thought-provoking. A lot of people went into science and engineering because of his influence.

Raoul Wallenberg - He stood up to the Nazis and Hungarian fascists to prevent thousands of people from being sent to the death camps.

Douglas Bader - PG mentioned him in his essay; this is a man who lost his legs in a flying accident. His disability didn't stop him from joining the Royal Air Force and piloting a fighter plane during the War. Not once did he feel sorry for himself; instead he was flying over Europe killing Nazis.

Norm Zadah - He went from being a professor of CS at Stanford to running a hedge fund and being a championship poker player. When a female friend of his was rejected from Playboy, he went ahead and started his own magazine, Perfect 10. So far, he's lost nearly $46 million on Perfect 10, and he's switched to web distribution, but he doesn't care, he likes his work. Truly a renaissance man.
That is a great nugget!
Norman Borlaug is Penn & Teller's hero too. To them, he's the greatest person who ever lived. I'm inclined to agree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
The generic social news space is seriously crowded - reddit, digg, jaanix, and many many others. So what I am trying to do is to find a niche that is underserved, and just focus on that.
Microsoft Screws Yahoo Board’s Weekend; Gives Three Weeks To Decide
This article presents a very narrow view of decision-making that only applies in certain situations.

Being able to make good decisions based on conflicting or incomplete information is critically important.
I agree that data-driven decisions are less common than they should be. However, there is such a thing as over-dependence on data, and this piece might be toying with the line. You don't have enough resources to test every little thing - sometimes you have to use your intuition and move on.
This is what I use at the moment. But, I find that the cycle is too long. I end up spending 10-15 minutes on something that could have been caught in real-time with something with auto-complete or a debugger.
Yes, really. I hate the idea of words that only a select group can use.
Good topic, but one line doesn't do enough justice. I want to know why people chose who they did. So forgive the length of my reply.

1) Personally, I'd have to say Matthew Halfant. I worked for him at VM Labs around y2k. Apart from his prodigious mathematical ability, he was a collaborator with Abelson and Sussman (of SICP fame) back in the 80s. More importantly he was a very kind mentor to me, and a great teacher. I still recall at my interview how he remarked it was nice to have a 'young fellow such as myself come aboard because I could teach them a thing or two.' Yeah, right! His willingness to hire me is what brought me to Silicon Valley.

I only wish I had asked him more about Lisp :)

2) I don't know Woz personally, but he's awesome because he achieved the pinnacle of 'ultimate engineer' through intense dedication to his craft, and also (and equally importantly) by retaining a playful, childlike attitude throughout his career.
Escape generally helps.
Nope, Microsoft is definitely not resorting to shady tactics and intimidation, definitely not. Sigh, how typical.
Small things considered. Just read every book he's written, you will enjoy it ;)
This is a really, really big deal.. not to mention a great article on the topic.

Solar is going to be one of the most significant technologies in the 4 - 10 year time frame, much like the Internet was in the 1990s. There'll be a boom and a bust, but the diving price of solar is going to revolutionize the world nonetheless.
Hrm, do you think my article was too long?

Anyhow, yes, you can make arbitrarily complex measurements.

The point was more human than technical: some data is better than none, even if it's not fine-grained. It results in fewer pointless arguments and better decisions overall.
aneesh,

I understand that, actually, and left it out of the blog post only for brevity's sake.

When I make decisions about my websites and other projects I have in mind a picture of my audience and what they're doing. This sort of experience is the basis for most intuition. Some people are really, really good at it, too.

The right kind of experiences can be data, too, but there are two dangers: (1) not being wiling to change your mind and (2) acting off too little experience.

I just expect that any "expert" whose intuition I'm supposed to trust will be able to justify their opinion when push comes to shove.
A tale of two geeks
Do you think this happens/will start happening in the software industry? Should we expect that 50% of google employees to be from Asia in 5-10 years? Anyone know what the numbers are like now?