skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't accept that his particular verbose version of doing things in java is acceptable. Just because dynamic language x does x things hidden behind a bunch of code means that you have to emulate the exact same things in another language to achieve the same result.

It's bad smalltalk to emulate C while your programming for it, and similarly it's bad C to emulate smalltalk with it. It's like I would take his original java version and made it into perl, insisting that the perl script HAS to be in a class definition, and HAS to be in a main method, I MUST define the resultset in a static class list, and output with separate methods. Saying that perl couldn't reproduce my 'reusable object' java functionality with doing that is just pedantic.

He should of just extracted a real example where it's impossible to do something in a short amount of code due to the lack of a specific feature, or being chained to java's static typing. Like converting a JDBC ResultSet to an int[]. (5 lines of code, 15 if you don't compress the curly brackets)

A real life implementation of his example:
public class Out { public static void main(String args[]){ for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { System.out.print(''+i*i+' ');} System.out.println();}

Also just because a language is succinct, doesn't mean it's productive. Just look at SML. It's many, many restrictions act as a straitjacket to do simple things, yet also keeps things succinct. It's would be better to say that because of intentional restrictions x (static typing) or lack of feature y (first class functions), it makes it that doing some simple thing z is forced to used workaround a. Because language b has this feature set, this leads to general bureaucratic overload.

Java isn't bureaucratic just because of the language alone, Sun & apache contributes a lot of this itself in how they've programmed their standard libraries and their love affair with XML.
In all my years working for small to mid sized startups, I have never seen a situation where two people founded a company based on one being the "tech guy" and the other one being "the business guy".

Rvery startup I've worked for was founded by one or two technical people and one person who raised the money. Generally the situation was that someone who had been working for years decided to start a company with a friend and used the reputation and contacts he'd built up over the years to raise money to finance it.

I've never worked at a company with more than 10 employees where there was a non-technical founder who didn't provide access to capital.

With that being said, I think as the "business guy" there will be a lot of pressure on you to work extra hard and really produce (especially if you aren't providing the financing). It's usually not enough to have "good ideas" or "the idea"...you should be bringing something so valuable to the table that the other founder(s) says "Thank god this guy is here!"

It almost seems that a business guy will have to put in more effort than a hacker as a founder. The hacker doesn't have to be an exceptional hacker...he merely has to produce a working website. However since the business guy doesn't have a lot of measurable output, he will have to work extra hard to show that he's carrying his weight.
Avril Lavigne Under My Skin
Grapes, bags of spinach, you name it. The trick is to not stock munchies that you don't want yourself to code on. If you don't have it, you can't eat it. The other trick is to not cut out all snacking but stock up on snacks that fill the void without expanding the void, so to speak.

And drink a tall glass of water three minutes before you feel like snacking. It'll keep you hydrated, which is good, and you'll snack less on average. A lot of the munchies is actually dehydration (like late night snacking).

Also, if you have peanuts or something and you're just watching TV rather than coding try eating them with chopsticks to slow you down so you notice when you're full. Once you get good at that, try peanuts with a fork or do the toss and catch or something ;-)
With any luck your certification system will do for milk what US News & World Report did for colleges.
That options pool is ridiculously huge.
I've always thought about dropping out of the system; I think it parallels with the "I could rob this bank"thought that every man has. My favorite articles are below
http://www.innerexplorations.com/catsimple/2.htm (simple living)

http://www.ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html (dropping out)

http://www.zenzibar.com/articles/worksucks.asp (work sucks)

as far as where I'm at, I'm currently living in a studio barn apartment that was built out for me for around $5k my rent is $50/mo plus electricity for the whole barn ($100) I plan to live there for at least 5 years it is about 600 sqFt. I drive an old truck to my job that is paid for, and I try to save as much as I can; when I see things going south I will build a dome on the farm (150k) w/ 1 acre of land included and then move out there with expenses of <$500 month and live for 10-20 years
For some reason, I don't think basing selection of news stories on whatever is the funniest to crack jokes about is the "goal" we should aim for with reporting. Not trying to knock Jon Stewart, but just because sometimes he is more informative than some news shows doesn't mean we should be looking toward him to set the standard.
It's technically not "public domain", but it is open-source.
I took the liberty of pointing folks at WTF to your link. Hope you don't mind.

It's a wonderful interview.
I'm a generalist, so I suppose that's right. But I am saying something a little more than that.

Computer Science is the first serious attempt to study process as a concept in and of itself. It's the study of how to do things, and how to learn how to do things. A lot of things in life, from business planning to washing a sinkfull of dishes, can be done better if you apply a little process analysis.
There's no such thing as buying a plot of land free and clear, at least in the US. You're buying a set of rights, not the land itself. What those rights are is a function of local, state, and federal laws, the contract, and any restrictions put on the land previously.

That said, you can always build a barn and then put the trailer in the barn.
A New SEO Business Model - Selling Your SEO Data / Logs?
Anyone try hiring offshore dev or designers lately? Some of these guys want more than I would have to pay someone locally from craigslist. Are Americans the new Indians?
Genius marketing tactics behind Vaynerisms
Vaynerisms are the term to describe Gary's very well known word use.
One should not copy Greenspun's headlines casually from venue to venue. Greenspun has a particular style, one which thrives on irony, drama, and the occasional dollop of literary exaggeration. :)

In fact, the linked article does not argue that Brazilian labor is more expensive than that in the U.S. All we can conclude is that, taking all factors into consideration, cheaper foreign labor isn't driving Embraer to avoid the USA. Given that aviation is a heavily regulated, litigated, and taxed field, that doesn't tell us much -- maybe building jets in the USA for US customers saves a bunch of tariffs, or takes advantage of a tax loophole, or saves delivery costs or supply costs.

I looked up Brazil's per capita income and it's just under $5k a year. The jobs mentioned pay $50k a year.

Well, to be fair, "aviation assembly worker" might be a relatively high-paying job in Brazil. The cost of "workers" and the cost of "skilled workers suitable for careers in your aircraft factory" are two different things. But, again, the article gives us no clues whatsoever.
Does this mean that Google and Yahoo have an API that anyone can freely use to authenticate people against their Google/Yahoo account?

Please forgive my ignorance, but I feel that I'm missing something here.
yeah when they aren't connected to actual load progress it sucks. The concept still works (hold the users attention just a tad longer...) but I think if its just a looping character it should be a spinning wheel etc.. then the user knows to expect to wait but isn't anticipating and amount of wait time.
Getting Down to the Business of Creativity
That 0.5 million line java game of his must be really something. I saw some screenshots and it reminded me of things I played on Windows 3.1. Dollars to donuts he's going some wtf-worthy stuff in there.

ED: Oh, yeah, reading through the article, I see it must be true. His "print the squares" example is pretty bad. If I did it (using some home[green]spun libraries) it would look like this, more or less:

List squares=Util.makeList(Util.makeList(1,2,3,4,5),Util.class,"square");
System.out.println(squares);

(Reflection is being performed, with "square" being a static method from Util.class) Really, I would need a Util.makeRange(1,5) function to get closer to perl.
I find that lite/macro beer is easier to code with. This is probably because it has less alcohol in it. All it takes is one 6% craft-ale and my coding is done for the night.
TechCrunch events across Europe
MSNBC. An online experience.
Linking free speech to property rights carries a bunch of political and philosophical assumptions that are divorced from the legal history and realities of 1st amendment law in the U.S. Thats not just not how it works from either a legal or policy standpoint.
This is the top "Hacker News"?
Social Media Noise: Top Lists are the Pits!
I respectfully disagree with your comment about the Thanksgiving Dinner lie. You stated, "that was probably the best way to handle a frightened 10 year old."

In my experience a far better way would be to tell the truth, "I don't know if the Turkey wanted to die." Then, the parents could parent the child and explain how everything needs to eat to live. It was a perfect opportunity for the parents to illustrate why they purchase certain brands of Turkey, don't eat hot-dogs, are vegetarian, go hunting, etc.

Would your friend have spoken the same lie if he had been alone with his child?

It is a parent's job to judiciously teach their children, not to lie when they don't know how to teach or find it inconvenient to do so.
Having an attractive website can be very helpful. Between two otherwise identical websites, the more attractive one will probably get more use, especially with certain target markets. Of course, it's also possible to get carried away. One needs to also pay attention to utility, load time, maintenance costs, etc. Ultimately, its really a matter of priorities.
Verizon Wireless to introduce Linux phones
Charter explains deep-packet inspection for ad targeting: It's an "enhancement"
Ask HN/YC: Early stage startup, equity for a non executive co-founder 
Hi

I am working on an early state startup with three others.

Three out of the four in the team have worked together in our previous startup, where I was an early employee. We have worked with each other for about 6 years now.

Now, between the other three, one is going to be the CEO, the other VP of Engineering and the last VP of Sales and Biz Dev. I will be the 'architect' for the startup.

We have been working on this for a few months now and we are now talking to VCs to raise funds. My question to HN / YC is 'What is a fair % of equity for me at this stage?'. Given the past history and trust between us, if there is an issue with equity, what is the best way to deal with it?

Thanks.
'Education - something' seems to fill a lot of lower rungs.

I know that these scores were a semi-common meme around grad school when I was there. People wondered why philosophers/physicists/mathematicians gravitated towards each other, but it was silently suspected among a few of us that it was due to similar analytical ability. The results were even more pronounced when the logic test still existed.

I think that one shouldn't overemphasize the mean though. There's a lot to be said for the distribution -- in physics, the entire lower part of the curve gets weeded out. That doesn't seem to happen in CS. And philosophers learn to write arguments and navigate arcane vocabularies as a matter of course. Perhaps the math result is indicative of general ability, but they have to do logic, too.
With the recent dramatic rise in food prices it doesn't sound so bad.

Here in UK rice is up 100%, cooking oil up 80%, flour up #40%, gas/electricity up ~70% etc.

We are lucky though, at least there are no food riots like in south/south-east asia at the moment.
maybe you could do that in the US, where the threat of lawsuits might keep people honest. but i wouldn't risk it.

seems like the problem this essay is pointing out is that the laws aren't fine-grained enough to distinguish between industrial farms and mom-and-pops. But probably, if there WERE such a distinction and mom-and-pops got off easy, corporate agriculture would bend over backwards to meet the technical definition. if the law said people can sell uncertified stuff on the farm premises, there'd be a little hen house in the back of every shoprite (or whatever), just like with the suv fuel efficiency restrictions. perhaps one way around that, though, is that since all corporations are (if anything) corporations, the law could single out food that's been handled by employees of registered corporations for special treatment. but who knows, they'd probably find a way around that too.
Firefly is an "A.D.D. Twitter"
Charter Will Monitor Customers Web Surfing to Target Ads
How to make the leap from corporate hack to entrepreneur
Some people don't like gotcha questions of this type for the reason that they often aren't relevant to the type of work you're hiring for. If you're more concerned with productivity, a good technique I've used is to sit someone down at a computer and give them a simple programming task. Then sit near them and listen to how fast they type. Almost everyone is going to make noises about being nervous (because it is nerve wracking) but you can usually tell right away who is practiced in writing code and who is merely familiar with the theory of writing code. It's often hard to tell the two apart just by asking questions. Of course, you should look at the code afterward but a surprisingly high number of people don't make enough noise on their keyboard for you to even bother.

An example web development task might be to create a form that asks for a search term and then returns all matching rows in a database. Easy, right? It's supposed to be.

Of course, you could also limit yourself to hiring people with open source projects. But of all the people I've hired, the one who did best on the gotcha questions was also the least productive in terms of building software. So you want to get proof of productivity somehow.
O = Organic
U = ???
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7229

(yes, this is a bit weak, but I have a job :P)
Google: ' google authentication api'

returns AuthForWebApps

http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/AuthForWebApps.htm...

Seems really cool, to be honest adding this to most apps would increase signups significantly... I think your app has to be google verified though.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-06-28-n34.html (good overview)
The Indian outsourcing trend was operating at unsustainable rates, fueled by the overvalued dollar:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dean_baker/2007/11/down_...

Unfortunately, while the dollar is finally falling in a way that will help reinvigorate the US industries that the strong dollar helped to injure or kill over the last decade, the sharp fall in the dollar's value is also a big pain -- higher inflation, higher interest rates, and all at a time when the real cost of oil is shooting up.

I'm certainly not surprised to see developers in foreign countries demanding comparable salaries to developers in the USA. Are they supposed to be altruists, cheerfully working for less than their market value just because their local cost-of-living is so much lower? ;)
When I call them lies, I didn't mean to say they don't exist, or that two people can't be happy, in love and monogamous forever.

But we certainly misrepresent to children the prevalence of this sort of thing.

Look at fairy tales and movies. To a child, _all_ people grow up, meet their perfect true love, marry them and stay together forever. As for the damaging part of the lie, of course there's no need to work at a relationship because the match is just so perfect.
Nice, if a bit glossy. I find this visualization to be a bit more profound:

http://cr.yp.to/snuffle/diffusion.html
It did at one point seem like the reasons parents don't like their teenage kids having sex were very complex, but after reading and thinking more about it, I decided it was mostly that they still think of them as children.
To refute a work of fiction?
Sorry, no refunds.
The author of this paper (Joe Salatin) runs Polyface farms. Recently, they've been in the news for helping Chipotle figure out how to source local pork products for all of their stores. If you live in the Northeast, you can eat some of his pork by going there.
Build something that solves a problem is what I said.
We're using it to power one of our demo servers, and it is very fast--definitely on par with mongrel and fastcgi. Stable too. We're not getting anything near production loads on that server, though.
Chatbot Game: Compete to enhance the chatbot by adding simple "chat rules".
I wasn't thinking about horrible stuff so much as banal stuff. For example, celebrity gossip. I'm always annoyed in a grocery store when I find that before realizing it I've read the cover of some tabloid. It's like unconsciously picking up something and eating it, and then realizing too late that it was a mouse turd.
Very bad things happen when you make regulations. The cost of all goods is higher because they all must comply. That means that there are people who can't afford the cost of the regulated goods who could eat more if the goods were available which met a lower regulatory threshold which was still acceptable to them.

Why do you assume that the current regulatory tradeoff between safety and cost is the right one for everyone?
kosher?
I find if I gorge on carbs or rich foods during work time, I'll start to feel sluggish and want a nap. If I eat a small to medium portion of veggies and fruits, I'll be able to maintain (elevate even) my focus without the "food-ludes".

I don't know if it's age (in my late 20s) or an increased interest in being attuned to my body, but food management has become critical to my daily productivity.

So yeah, I get into the coding zone with grapes.
Damn, I suck. I can't do half that stuff.
Everyone must be happy; a fair share for each is 25%. I think it’s very important that no one feel minimized.
Disqus and Seesmic Pair Up For Video Comments
Con Man's Nightmare: Unlocking Academia
Any how-to with the word "Rassle" in one of the chapter titles is an immediate win in my book.
do not hover your mouse on the "OH SNAP" link. it will go to rick roll!! WTF?!
While that quote isn't his whole opinion about religion, it does set a pretty sharp bound on it, and moreover one that falsifies a lot of the interpretations that religious people have made of his vaguer statements.
Erlang's Shared Memory
RubySpec: Bringing Ruby Test Suites Together
Plurk: Your life, on the line
CERN's Particle Accelerator To Launch, Complete With Requiste Doomsday Theories
Verizon joins LiMo Foundation, snubs Google's Open Handset Alliance
Well, he told you a lie: that religion was silly.

Religion can or cant't be the truth. Tell the kid god exits and you are lying(you don't know it) Tell him the contrary and you are lying(you don't know it).

Don't confuse the fact that both of you agree in something(which is normal between parents and son) with the fact this is the truth.
Eating is kind of funny. A big reason to eat something is because you like the taste of it. So you would think you would want to eat slowly and keep it in your mouth for as long as possible since that's where you taste it.

Instead, the instinct (presumably evolution based) is to eat a lot of it quickly. So besides the nice taste, we are also wired to derive satisfaction from swallowing the food. If this link between tasting and swallowing as the atomic satisfaction producer could be broken, it seems like it could be helpful for people who eat too much.
tptacek - thank you for the comments.

One other lesson that we learned from Startup School is that "advice=limited experience+generalization" so clearly I am not trying to give advice here. But I am trying to answer the original premise of the post which is that "can anyone start a startup without having a hacker as a co-founder?" And my answer is yes and what I tried to do is equate over-reliance on technology with over-reliance on money. In other words, if the original question were "can anyone start a startup without having $500K from a VC as seed money?", the answer would have been yes as well.

Keep in mind that I am talking about the initial stage of a startup. In other words, I am talking about going from nothing to something. Once you are done with the initial concept stage and you have a working model of your product and services and you have a workable business model, then everything changes and you are going from something to something more, which is very different again (in other words, I will need a lot more than $180).

What I have learned is that success of a startup requires both vision and peripheral vision. Having lots of money and lots of technical talents in the beginning help a great deal in terms of executing your vision, but unfortunately they tend to cloud your peripheral vision. In other words, if you have too much money in the beginning, you are going to spend it pushing the market as opposed to finding an opportunity to get the market to pull you. And by the same token, having a strong "hacker" as a co-Founder also can have the same unintended consequence which is that you are going to hit every nail with the same hammer (in the first year of my previous startup, I had to change out the technical team when it was clear that our initial business idea was incorrect).

Again, I am not trying to offer advice here (by generalizing my own limited experience). I am merely trying to answer the original question and my answer is a resounding yes. Anything is possible ... entrepreneurship is the great equalizer.

Thanks again.
I doubt taboo words are (always, or necessarily) related to taboo thoughts. It's not taboo to think about fucking, but in many contexts it's taboo to use the word instead of its "milder" alternatives.
You bring up excellent points. There is a very long list of things I hate to do would likely screw up even if I tried to do (like file my taxes on time). I would be more than happy to partner with a non-hacker cofounder that had a good idea and was willing to take care of the boring parts. (By good idea I mean a business that can actually make money and with market research to back it up, not gamble on M&A).