skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not everyone is artistic. There is a market for people to come in to work, do something moderately intelligent for 8 hours, and then go home. I think this sort of school system prepares people for this sort of job pretty well. (I went to school in Japan for a year. I would much rather send my kids to school there than a random school in the US.)

Besides, creativity can't be taught. So you might as well focus on teaching things that can be taught :) Eventually the creative people will realize that they should do something creative.

That said, a 15 hour school day is definitely excessive. You can pretend to learn for 15 hours a day, but you can't actually do it. I think 8 hours a day is the maximum amount of time you can focus on something that is not "interesting", hence the 8 hour workday that most people keep.
understood , I just thought it was a very over-generalized comment by stating "they've targeted schools for 30 years and it's worked," when from all appearances, has been decently for the last 10
I think it will have a big, negative impact on increasing quality.
2-4% and a market rate salary after a VC funding round is about market rate for an experienced executive, eg someone brought in to be a VP of Engineering.
Mob Software - poetic and long essay on software engineering
An October 2000 essay by Richard P. Gabriel and Ron Goldman. I would call it a long and poetic look at the undercurrents and approaches to software system construction/engineering. I hadn't seen it and figured others here might find it interesting.
for a salary of $40K the taxes would be around 20-30% in the US depending on your family situation
Studying 15 hours a day is not cheating - it is insane.
Attention founders working on the premise that "where there's muck, there's brass:"

Enterprises need software products and backing services that assume the client will use the software to attain enlightenment about how they ought to change their own processes.

Figuring out how to do that with a model that can get around the distribution/sales/paperwork hurdle will make you rich.
ATHF, Marc Ellis And A World Of Marketing Stunts
I need someone with a strong understanding of free markets to help me out here; but if this is really so big, why hasn't HPQ skyrocketed?

I'm not being a smartass, I just really don't understand why we haven't seen financial implications of this find.

Edit
In the interest of disclosure, I've bought some shares to put my money where my mind is.
As Bush has shown very clearly, Ivy League skills have nothing to do with intelligence or even studying.

I think as long as asian universities and school focus on work so much and completely omit inter-personal skills, they will fail to to anything other than produce very smart people with no life.

Daniel
I mean nothing more than it's the number I'm deriving rather than the one I started from.
http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html

I guess if you omit the 2008 it does look like April 2001......................
I guess blog posts are often glass half-empty/half-full thingies. It's totally valid to feel that the annoyance of the empty part of the glass outweighs the enjoyment of the half-full part.

On my good days, I feel a lot more charitable about such things than on my bad days. It's dogs are sages all over again:

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/03/programmers-are-sages.ht...
funny how most commenters strike down the person for asking, yet PG actually replies to 4/5 questions. why not either a) try to answer the questions or b) let PG answer them, because he seemed pretty willing.
Busting a few myths of tech entrepreneurship related to age, education, location
Doing a startup seems to me more like playing soccer than running a marathon. Though you need to pace yourself, there are moments when you want to work super hard. So while being out of breath is not a sufficient condition for winning, it probably is a necessary one.

Likewise for startups. Sleep deprivation is not a sufficient condition for winning, but empirically it seems to be a necessary one. Not long-term, obviously, but during certain peak times. Even at YC there are times when we have to work so hard that we sleep less. On interview weekends, for example.

So the reason people who work hard (not just in startups, but in all fields) treat sleep deprivation as a badge of honor is that it's a sign that one has the necessary commitment not to cave when there are spikes of work.
More discussion on /.:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/01/1729251
Wow. And living in San Diego is expensive, too. Probably a lot more expensive than in Dallas or Austin that have comparable salaries.
It's a reflection of the physical limits of transportation. Even if you have a weightless car, you still have to move the weight of the passenger, who's a lot heavier than the electrons getting moved around in computers. Really, nothing in history has improved as fast as computer hardware, so it's reasonable to assume that most things won't.

That doesn't mean that huge advances are not possible - read Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken to learn how 250mpg cars are possible with current tech.
Kindle finally available for immediate shipment
Well I like where I work, but the only problem is that the old people don't believe in naps. They prefer the 9-5 mundane corporate environment despite the fact that we're a startup.
I would wait to get laid off with severance package, or survive with my job. Will working in Microhoo be that terrible? I don't think so.

In the very long term, I don't see bright future for Y!, since they don't have any really unique technology. They basically profit from their being the first who created big directory of www links, which is now rather irrelevant.

But talking about employment, I don't think it's useful to think long-term, so it would be perfectly fine for me to work there right now.
Yeah, sorry, I should have said, "South Bay Area" when I was quoting rent prices. I'm assuming things would be quite a bit more expensive in Palo Alto or San Fran. My quote was also based on a new grad wanting to live in El-Cheapo rent districts. If someone wants to, they can certainly pay $2000 a month for a rather nice one bedroom with a concierge at the desk in the South Bay.
To summarize how huge this is:

Google now provides anyone with a credit card and an internet connection with the ability to create a television commercial and monitor the success of their campaign using a simple online tool. Touche!
Part of it is, but China has several things that the Japanese do not.

Japan has to import pretty much everything they need to keep their economy running. The Japanese population is also about half that of the United States, and during their boom years, there was such a massive problem in finding skilled workers that the Japanese government had to turn a blind eye to the sheer number of illegal immigrants flooding in from the rest of southeast Asia.

The Japanese also care very deeply about nature; I have never seen a polluted stream or a park covered in litter there, and I've spent a decent amount of time in the country. Of course, this is one of the bits of Japanese culture that I rather love. grin

So, Japan could have probably swallowed the U.S., if they weren't so dependent on imports; it puts a limit to how high their economy can really go.

China has a wealth of natural resources, and more than enough skilled workers. China also doesn't care one iota about their ecology, which is why Beijing is not a city to live in if you're a fan of air, or water -- it's also worth noting that, sanitation-wise, mainland China is still very much a third-world country.

But unlike Japan, China doesn't need to be importing and exporting to keep their economy going; they've got so much work to do in their own country that they've got growth potential out the wazoo.

That said, China is rapidly becoming a toxic wasteland, and I'm curious how well the Chinese business system (all businesses being government entities) will scale; this goes double, given how the culture promotes rampant cronyism and incredible corruption.

Well, we live in interesting times. :)
I wonder what would happen if instead of a steady 8 hour workday or school day it was broken down into four 2 hour periods. I tend to work better that way personally.
From watching the demo this looks awesome. I think a good number of startups could benefit from TV advertising and hopefully this will make it easier for them to do so.
So then what do you think the smart investor should put their money in now?
Agreed, especially when they provide the free shuttle. The author of the blog post does not seem to have a clue.
Growth curves for a single company flatten out because a single company can never be larger than the entire market (and in practice never even close to that large). If Google were to grow indefinitely it will eventually become 100% of the economy, swallowing all other companies and employing everyone, but even at that point it would still grow, but only at the rate the entire economy grows.

Growth for the entire economy is only limited by our abilities to innovate and find resources (both material and human resources). There is no inherent ceiling. The ceiling on a single company (which makes it's growth rate fall off) is imposed when it saturates it's market and can't enter any new markets, the economy as a whole is fueled by the seemingly endless wants of humanity. In essence, there is always a new market for the economy to enter: the next human desire.

In short, the only way there could be a ceiling on the entire economy is if humans stopped wanting new things. Economic growth is supply constrained (supply of resources and innovation), not demand constrained.
Tones aren't so bad. Characters aren't half as ugly as most people imagine; a few years of diligent study will suffice (same as for Japanese, I imagine).

A good question for you, is how has your life as an ABC impacted your relationships with people from the mainland? I've heard that ABCs are looked down upon as being almost subhuman by a lot of Mainlanders.
That certainly covers some of my issues with the Air.
SWF and FLV are going to become open
This should shut up the people who bash Flash because "it won't work on my niche Unix offspring."
Blackberry KickStart (Flip Phone) Pics Arrive… Would you use it?!
Actually, as of 0.7.0 RC1, Redmine does support Git (see http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/Changelog). It took a couple of patches, but Git support was added to the Subversion trunk and is available in the latest stable release. I haven't personally used Redmine with Git, though.
37signals and the pain of the below-the-fold button
Starbucks isn't the only one of the three that doesn't really make superior products. BMW has a heck of a reputation for making superior products, but that reputation doesn't match up to reality so much -- unless you're comparing it to something like Ford. Similar standards apply to A&F, for that matter.

Coffee isn't Starbucks' only product quality problem, by the way. The tea is substandard, too. Hell, even the hot white chocolate is only passable.

. . . and I skipped the commercial middle-man. I'm typing this from a Thinkpad running FreeBSD.
It's funny to see people making this argument. When was the last time that MS released anything truly new or made any "competitor" history? Netscape was a long time ago.
True.

The startling thing about all this isn't the price of coffee at Starbucks. It's the fact that Starbucks is charging the same amount for coffee that's only half as good and still putting better coffee shops out of business.

On the other hand, the bottled Frappuccino I can get in gas stations is great. It's my caffeine of choice while driving on long road trips. Amazing they can get their prepackaged per-unit retail stuff so right, while getting their in-store freshly made beverages so wrong.
How Fixed Priced Projects Increase Risk
That reminds me, I didn't hit the ellpitical machine yesterday. Better do that now.
No, you were right to pick Starbucks on the strength of its fanboyish customers. The fact that it attracts haters as much as fanboys doesn't change the fact that it has a lot of fans.
This is why I wish more software jobs had flexible hours. The vast majority of programmers have absolutely no need to be in their office at some predefined hour. So if you had to work late one night, it'd be nice to be able to sleep some of it off the next day. But no... Megacorp wants you in your chair by 8.

And as a night owl, I can not fall asleep before 2-3ish am, but I have to be at work by 8 or 8:30, so I'm constantly working with some sleep deprivation.
I don't believe the "out of breath" analogy quite holds, because being sleep deprived is not working at your brain's full potential, whereas running flat out probably is working at your lung's full potential.

A better analogy might be playing while hurt. You're clearly not at your full potential, but you are making progress.

But I'd argue that I'd rather have people on my team that aren't hurt: it is detrimental to performance in a similar way and acknowledges the commitment.

And it is also usually a bad idea.
Would you buy a computer to use Winamp? Or, perhaps more fair today: would you switch OSs to use it?
Again, would you BUY a computer to view porn?
Correlation != Causality

That said, exercise makes you feel good.
Good point -- and one I was going to make, until I saw you beat me to it: there are usually a godawful lot of Macs at Starbucks, in my experience.

I tend to notice this on my way to a local 24/7 coffee shop with better quality beverages, competitive prices, free wireless, and less business, carrying my Thinkpad.
I don't agree with the methods and values described in the article, but these kids deserve a lot of respect for being able to master the English writing requirements. They are not native English speakers and are growing up in Korean society.
Using Python to Grab Images From a Web Site
Well, 4 hours, lunch, 4 more hours :)

But if you mean more separation than that... it might be interesting, but most people don't want to commute 4 times a day.

Personally, I usually work for 6 hours, then I watch TV, relax, take a nap, etc. and then do some more work before really going to sleep. Very relaxing and productive. (Working at home is nice.)
I second this.

Personally I am super productive from about 9pm to 2-3am.

But I need to be at the client at a reasonable hour (9am-9:30am).

Lately I've taken to hacking away from about 9pm to midnight then going to bed so that I can keep everyone happy. Of course, I tend to toss and turn a bit because there is always something that my mind is chewing on that I left off at midnight.

Weekends, all bets are off and my sleep schedule gets totally messed up with late nights and early mornings (2 year old kid). Ugh, I am not 18 any more :)
When was the last time you saw the movie Hackers? I LOVE this movie.
I doubt you will find many people that disagree there is more to live.

However, this is a short term sacrifice to achieve a goal. Many people would laugh at someone wanting to start a company on the side while working full time too. So let's not be too judgmental of their ambition.
Depriving yourself of sleep for long periods of time is obviously not good. But pulling a couple of all-nighters a week when needed is pretty necessary if you want to get anywhere IMHO.
On the Brink: Newspaper Extinction
This might be better titled "Chronic sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor", but the point is well-made. Being sleep-deprived is like being drunk: you're not competent to realize how incompetent you've become.
New FriendFeed Widget Launches
I think you missed the "with tactile responses" part. Tactile feedback is very important to me when typing, because I type quickly, often without having to stare at the keyboard to aim my fingers.
I started using similar method few months ago and it works well for me. I wrote a simple web app to help me with this... Smacklet http://www.smacklet.com
You can edit that, y'know.
Sorry I am a bit lost here. How is this a paradox?

Now we can conclude that if this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists, then necessarily,

if Santa Claus does not exist, this sentence is false, but

if this sentence is false, we cannot conclusively make any statement about the existence of Santa Claus.

Even if you modified the above statement to

iff this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists,

the above would still apply. If the sentence is false, then the iff condition is also false, so if the sentence is false, Santa Claus may or may not exist.
Why did we stop paddling?
I'll let you know. I'm currently outsourcing my education to a 20 year old in Bangalore. If all goes well I'll have my BS in CS by the end of 2009 and at a huge savings.
Exactly. Or Spanish. Or French. Or Russian. How many language fads have there been in the last century, based on the perceived importance of the country/countries?

Unless you plan to relocate to China or Asia, I think most people considering language study would be better off learning a programming language. I am a proficient Mandarin speaker, and while it helped me greatly when I lived in Taiwan, it has done nothing for my career in the United States, except for a single nibble from a software company that needed a bilingual project manager (they ended up hiring a native speaker).
"which is why they have a small percentage of the market?"

Depends which market. They have a tiny share in one, dominant share in the other.
Please, get over yourself.
it makes a clicking sound and zooms in on the key you press. I think that's pretty good. I find it a little harder to type on the iPhone when it's set to silent. I like to know when I've hit a key.
Myself . . . ? I'm not jrockway.
It’s easy to say that when never played on MSFT turf; asked anyone of those companies building plug-ins or Add-ins for their platform. Ask your self why the Europeans are so hard on MSFT these days >1 billion in fines.
That still doesn't suit my need for tactile feedback (especially since it's not tactile -- it's audio).
I am not sure that anybody needs to learn Mandarin. However, all my friends who speak it have gotten nice job offers in China.
The website doesn't work so well for me. It says it requires Flash (even though I have a Flash plugin installed).
Honestly? Like 3 years ago. For the 5th time...

I remember downloading this from silicon toads website when I was younger. Maybe not quite 13 but it seems like that would be around the right age.
I don't understand what you mean about the economy's growth curve. But if what you think is correct then that implies you have discovered a trading rule! You should go short bonds and long stocks, and make yourself a fortune. ;-)
In the real world, capital markets tend to become more efficient over time as inefficiencies are arbitraged away. So it's unrealistic to expect that any particular asset class will outperform others on a risk-adjusted basis over a century.
I think you should learn at least the basics of one other language. It's a brain-expanding thing.
Do you know any adults who buy happy meals... for themselves?
Total taxes in the US on a $40K salary for a single person with no other income and no other deductions: about $4,200 (10.5%). The marginal tax rate is higher, of course, and state taxes will add a little, but not too much.
How To Market Yourself (see comments)
Man - my first job out of college was $16/hour. That's what I get for majoring in philosophy.
What I mean is quite simple. Suppose the economy is growing at x%. That x% is made up of components. Some things are growing at smaller than x%, some larger. But when you sum them all together in a weighted fashion, you get x%.

Now bonds, on average, grow somewhere near x%, while stocks, on average, grow more than x%. And other things, like most savings accounts grow at less than x%. The reason stocks should grow faster is that they represent money that is being invested in new innovation (often technology), which have generally higher growth prospects than where the bond money is being invested (e.g. infrastructure).

If you look at the economy's growth curve, you can consider it made up of several different curves corresponding to different asset classes, which when summed together in a weighted fashion, yields the overall curve. The stock part makes up more of the growth component than bonds and that is what I meant by makes up a faster part of the growth curve.

This doesn't constitute a trading rule by any means. I'm not talking about any premiums or arbitrage opportunities. In fact, my comment said if the premium is really gone.

All I'm saying is I don't see how the area of study you referenced concludes that bonds as an asset class will grow at the same rate as stocks. And I still don't see it. Please enlighten me.

Note that I am not suggesting stocks outperform bonds on a risk adjusted basis. That's why I ended the comment saying they were riskier, and that, as a result you should buy and hold them.

The overall point here that I suppose I am making is that just because asset classes grow at the same rate when adjusted for risk doesn't mean you should be indifferent to which you invest in. Buying low, selling high aside, if you can smooth out the risk via buy and hold and other strategies, it is wise to invest some in the assets with the higher growth curves.
In my years as an investment banker, most of the sleep deprivation that I was subjected to was the result of poor planning (mostly by other people) and a hyper-macho, superficial culture. Now as I'm trying to rebuild my health and psyche, I realize that maybe 20% of it was necessary to accomplish some important project. The rest could have been skipped without harming the financial results of the company, though my reputation would have suffered and I might have been fired long before I quit.

David, if your advocacy leads to even slightly more humane workplaces, you will deserve to be hailed as a saint by millions of people.
You seem to have perfected it to an art ;)
It turns out the hiring manager was under the impression it was confidential since no one had ever asked him before. He's an engineer, so I can forgive him for not knowing.

While the stock options aren't great, I was able to get them to up the salary by a lot, so I ended up accepting the job. If they didn't have such a good track record I probably would have run the other way. Either way, the comments on this board helped me negotiate a much better salary even if my options are mostly worthless.
Just because I'm in a bad mood: That would have been the case, had Japan been as large as China.
You're misunderstanding the metaphor. Working while tired is working at your full potential measured in what you can do in n hours (which is the case you usually face in a startup), not in what you can do per hour (which rarely matters).
This part of the article really got to me:

"China was the largest economy for centuries because everyone had the same type of economy - subsistence - and so the country with the most people would be economically biggest. Then the Industrial Revolution sent the West on a more prosperous path. Now the world is returning to a common economy, this time technology- and information-based, so once again population triumphs."

The exuberance for Japan 20 years ago was a bubble, and as such it was based on a lot of irrational assumptions: The Japanese had better business models, more productive workers, better work culture, etc. However, the advocates for China's rise are just counting on one, objective indicator; they outnumber us.
Someone (perhaps the submitee) please tell us why, this is relevant, dealing with infinite loops? or something? -
I think it's the "when needed" part that is the real problem. Most startups use being a startup as an excuse to justify a perpetual crunch mode to make up for poor planning.

All three of the startups I worked for over the years tried that, and none of them have gone anywhere significant. All of them ended up laying off a lot of people.
Or search for the headline in Google. NYT apparently doesn't block anonymous users referred by Google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=You+Name+It%2C+and+...