skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are LOTS of ideas men around. You don't have to be a programmer, but you do have to bring some other value besides having good ideas. We've all got good ideas. Salesmanship in particular is helpful if you are the ideas man. Business sense or experience are also good.
There is a lot of natural variance in circadian rhythms. Mine is also much longer than 24 hours. If I let myself go "free-running" then my sleep/wake patterns cycle around 24 hours about once a month. The lengthened cycle is not necessarily unhealthy but it makes it very difficult to conform to a 24-hour schedule. If you have continued difficulty with your sleep cycle then talking to a doctor specializing in sleep disorders might be a good idea. There are a variety of options for dealing with the issue.
A very recent study finds that:

1. ingested vitamin D is immunosuppressive

2. low blood levels of vitamin D may be a _result_ of the disease process and

3. Supplementation may make the disease worse.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080125223302.ht...

So PI 9 is on point: we should go out in the sun. And you can't wear sunscreen and get vitamin D from the sun.
like bigtoga said We wouldn't be here where we are today - and this is same with almost all s/w creator ...
The comments at the economist are pretty scary.

Even if the poor get high returns by investing the loan...it is not fair for the lender to capitalise on the good fortune and/or efforts of the borrower.

Answer to the question: Yes, it is acceptable to profit from the poor. If you disagree, please do not allow them to purchase bread or sell their labor.
Check out courses from The Teaching Company. I find that to be more productive to listen to while driving.
Your links don't work.
Also, it seems that some schools "addiction research" only consider something a relapse if it happens after 6 months not taking the drugs.

It can take a long time for a substance to work its way out of the body, and even longer for one behavior to be replaced with another.
Ideal age of a founder is irrelevant, why all the talk about it?
The lurker awakes! Young or a bit older? How does it matter? Age as a primary attribute of a founder (either younger or older) cannot make up for the lack of other necessary attributes - a complete list of which I cannot include here because I frankly don’t know. But, like porn, I know it when I see it – and I think we all do.

Each age range has its merits. So therefore wouldn’t it be wise, if one is youthful, to seek an older co-founder - or if one is older, to seek a youthful co-founder if only to mitigate any negative attributes of either age “bracket” through a diversification of possible viewpoints? Wouldn’t this make a startup stronger?

How can any other opinion on this matter avoid age driven over-generalization and bias?

If the youth prefer the youth, the aged prefer the aged – don’t both lose out?
I think that direct manipulation on a touch screen is a big deal.

"Grabbing" an object by touching it and then being able move it is an even better illusion on a touch screen than with a mouse. And it is delightful.
Maybe now we'll finally be rid of the fire ants. :P
Will reading and writing remain important?
The article had a negative tone about the supposed change to "digiracy," but the last paragraph was contrary to that:

>"Teachers must recognise that our pedagogical tools are inconsistent with the skills needed to survive in a world where people are always connected to everyone and everything. In such a world, learning to think for oneself could well be more important than simply learning to read and write."
Apple vs Microsoft Pocket PC | Tech Jaws
Yes, I whole heartedly agree. This is one of the strengths of touch screen interfaces. Reaching out and manipulating something is just about the most natural way to interact with it. Just watch a baby for a few minutes, they're instinct is to touch everything.
I hope everyone here is continuing to follow this meme. It's an incredibly powerful way to design businesses.

I strongly recommend John Seely Brown & John Hagel's 2005 "The Only Sustainable Edge" to further ground one's understanding of the new dynamics of advantage.

Any hacker that reads and understands that book would be unstoppable. And should call me ;-)
The Newton provided some nice UI guidelines. One of the ones I liked was putting controls on the bottom of the screen and the results/display on the top. This prevented your hand from obscuring the results.
Asus to embed Linux into all motherboards
Update:
Our product is social site.

designer do html/css (absolutely he can't code, if he need javascript ui he asked me to do it) and marketer (his job is send email, facebook message to potential user, answer user email, writing help document).

Sometimes i feel i am the only one who work hard, I have worked in three months, site is ready for private beta except it still look ugly, designer have not finished. Marketer absolutely has not do anything.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191849
How the Valley put Obama over the top
"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. It's not a technically a business book, but it's incredibly interesting for anyone who enjoys science. It does have one good business-related concept - it reinforces the idea that just having the best idea doesn't always make you successful or rich - it's the execution that counts.
Age is useful as a cheap early heuristic because it correlates with lots of other useful information.

I don't think the typical differences between young and old are actually complementary. Older people have some potential advantages in experience, younger have advantages in risk tolerance.
I don't understand how an interest rate of 70% could be fair, and who in their right mind would agree to such a rate?
Overheard from This Week in Media (http://www.pixelcorps.tv/this_week_in_media):

Post-production houses and graphical design companies often demand that all job applicants already have Photoshop experience. Yet for someone who doesn't already have a job, they can't afford Photoshop in order to get experience. The unspoken industry solution is that everyone has a pirated copy of Photoshop for personal use.

Also mentioned is that the big 3D modeling/rendering packages that everyone uses for production work (3D Studio, Maya, and LightWave) also happen to be the most pirated 3D software. Coincidence? Is the dog wagging the tail, or is the tail wagging the dog?
Fedora in the Nines! | Tech Jaws
I recommend:
Podiobooks.com <serialized free ebooks of many genres>, escapepod.org <scifi short stories> and
podcastle.org <fantasy short stories>

Look for Parsec award winners or Hugo award winners.
The search function for "java" brings up

http://www.exposedseo.com/?s=java&x=0&y=0&=Go

Which seems to be the intended article. And has nothing to do with Java. It's about Javascript.

To be fair, I did learn a neat Firefox trick:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191692
Well can you give more info about these ports? Sounds like you want to do interprocess communication of some kind with the JVM?

1. How exactly would you setup the JVM? Will you need to wrap every Java class you want to use with some kind of communication mechanism? What about callbacks?

2. Can you subclass a Java class?

3. What is the overhead of calling Java methods from Erlang?

4. Has anyone demonstrated a bridge to a non-trivial Java library using a language not running on the JVM?

I feel interprocess communication might be ok for some apps but not all apps.
thanks for the replies. Working in a digital media start up at the moment as their business development manager so I think I have the salesmanship.
Re: Programming true, i have started to learn it but would like to get a basic app done to see if the idea is actually viable and if people actually want it...before investing to much time into it.
This subject comes up every month or so, and every time I give my opinion which is always in the minority. Sometimes I think I'm the only one. So once again, as I prepare to get downmodded into oblivion, here goes...

You forgot Side 3 - I hate software piracy because it's wrong. Period. It's unethical, immoral, and illegal. And it's that simple. I don't even consider either of your 2 choices because both sidestep the question of right or wrong to examine other issues. This is situational ethics.

In all the years I've been in business, my number one concern has been ethical issues. The partner who disconnected his speedometer to increase his resale value. The vendor who raised his prices to get a personal "kickback". The employee who downloaded a customer list and sold it to a competitor. I could go on and on and on...

I've seen stuff like this so many times, and I ask the same question every time, "If they will compromise their ethics on something small, where do they draw the line?" I've seen multi-million dollar deals scuttled because someone didn't trust someone else because of their personal behavior on a "small" issue like this. Don't let yourself fall into this trap. It simply isn't worth it to save a few bucks.

I've heard all the counteraruments. "It's no big deal." "Everyone does it." "It's not hurting anybody." "I'll never get caught." Or the worst one of all, "They've already ripped me off, so I'm just getting them back." And you know and I know and everyone here knows it's all BS. We're just making excuses for what we all know is wrong.

Almost every proprietary software vendor has a complimentary "developer version" or a very cheap "student version". There are many other ways to get access to software or music without breaking the law or compromising your ethics. But a lot of us are just too lazy to take advantage of these things.

I would expect the Hacker News community, of all places, to be especially sensitive to this issue. After all, we are smart, hard working people who make software. But it seems like I'm always in the minority on this one.

So before you click that down arrow on this old prude, can I ask one question? Does anyone agree with me?
That's why you should create an alter ego who thinks Matt Maroon is so great he makes a fan site.
Stock and commodity markets work well because one share or contract is pretty indistinguishable from another. A continuous, bid/ask model will only work if they're careful to trade within certain bands of quality. Even then the 'lemons' problem applies. The rest is interesting, though.
Ideas are not enough, you have to bring something else to the table, i will advice you to learn how to hack, start with python, its easy to learn and at the same time, very powerfull to do what want. Just my 2 cents.
ants != hacker news
1. People's History of the United States: Highlights from the 20th century - Howard Zinn
2. Snow Crash - Neil Stephenson
3. jPod - Douglas Coupland
4. the world is flat 2.0
this is one of the reasons i use my wacom tablet all the time

now i just need to buy me one of them expensive wacoms that let you write right on the screen <_<
20 Of The Best Cities In The World For Telecommuting
That's a good point. I've appended it to bullet point #7.
to me it depends. I don't see anything wrong in trying to be like a Walmart (minus Walmart's abuses), though personally I feel that businesses such as 'payday loans' (as opposed to something good like kiva) and 'rent to own' stores are somewhat sketchy
Try virtualbox, 100% free in every way for all the features you'll need. Install and setup are extremely streamlined (way better than vmware). Just a few clicks. Fast also.
What was the problem with internal define in Arc?
You could get your band expanded and wear it on your forearm closer to your elbow. I do that sometimes with my velcro strap.
There is much to be said for exercise, but I still experience significant brain-drain and sluggish performance despite working out 7 days a week(weights 4 days, running 3).
Perhaps the combination of physical activity, diet and additional supplements are in order for some individuals.
As far as I am concerned, 'to each their own' means more than allowing individuals to decide whats ok for them - sometimes it can mean that 'each's own' is different and what works for some may not be for others.
Thats because such rates typically assume that the loans run for a long time. If the loan is only for 14 days the interest (given as %apy) quickly skyrocket.
John Ousterhout on Startup company culture
You mean it is not a yearly interest, but a constant? Like "we give you 100$ if you promise to pay us back 170$ whenever you are ready"?
Being the only hacker I can understand you are working very hard to get the project off the ground. Keep in mind that eventually as or project come closer to launch, you may find you require level of effort go down, and their go up quite a bit.
Xobni's marketing strategy is as memorable as Serutan's: in both cases you have to immediately explain what the word is ("It's Nature's Spelled Backward!"). Normally the goal of positioning is to own a word or phrase in the prospect's mind, this approach may be as ill-fated as Volkswagen's "Farfegnugen" campaign.
Amazon Web Services or Joyent Accelerators: Reprise
they need a lot of users to get liquidity to "make real markets work" but if so, they will beat ebay based on its inherent usntructuredness. worth a try.
I'm still looking for the rest of the article. For an Economist article, this one was pretty short and thin....
If the default rate is high enough then 70% could be what it takes for the lender to make a profit.
Someone who thought that was the best rate they could get could agree to such a rate.
An interesting point. But copyright according to the US constitution is something Congress _can_ grant for a limited time "to promote arts...". So this _is_ a case of situational ethics.
I have this problem as well (I'm even using the same laptop). To be honest, it's just become part of my routine to take off my watch when getting ready to hack. The unforeseen benefit is that it generates a Pavlovian response - As soon as I take my watch off when I'm at a keyboard, I go instantly into hack mode.
An example of how piracy helped a company: Macromedia.

Back in the 90s Adobe didn't had trials for their software on their website, and the software was usually lots of MB.
Compare that to the old 30MB download of a Dreamweaver trial that you could easly find a crack off. If Adobe had done the same with GoLive (former Cyberstudio) at the beginning they would probably have owned the WYSIWYG HTML editor market.

Also with some different apps, tough Adobe's Livemotion never was a true competitor to Flash.
"though no one explains how and from where these numbers came from"

I think those are just poor understanding of economics. Hope I don't say anything incredibly stupid, but the money has to come from somewhere. It seems more likely that the economy would suffer if more people would pay for software, because doing business would become more expensive. Or maybe it is just zero-sum (either the pirates get to spend the money, or the software vendors, but no additional wealth is being created).

Not saying I would decide for 1 or 2. Morals are a difficult issue. Is something immoral, just because it is against the law? What if I don't agree with the law? I am from Germany, so I have been taught that there can be times when the laws themselves are immoral.

I can't blame some poor 3rd world person to pirate a game or a movie that they otherwise would never be able to afford - I don't see the loss for the vendor? The usual counter is "games and movies are not essential for living", but I don't agree. I think people's lives should be worthwhile, too.
It is yearly interest, but the loan terms are typically much shorter. If the loan only lasts 14 days, a quoted APR seems much higher than is typical for, say, a mortgage, which lasts 30 years.
Reflections on the demise of my former employer
Response to CNN's Glenn Beck's Article on Harvard and Education
I don't see how it's difficult to see the "right" thing to do - it almost never is, really.

"The right thing" (TM) is to treat the poor like you would any other social entity. You (as a businessman) can profit off of them, but not by taking advantage of their desperate situation. You make a fair offer, you get a fair return, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Now if you choose to give them a more-than-fair offer (interest rates that just cover inflation, pretty much no profit involved) out of the goodness of your heart - kudos to you.

Keep in mind the most important thing: the current sub-prime woes were all caused by banks taking advantage of people who couldn't afford to pay them back; "balancing-off" the high risk of investment with even higher interest rates - and look where that's put the global economy. There's a lesson in there - you can't make a quick buck, and ripping people off can never help society as a whole in the long run.
The Business Plan: Part I
The Last Bite: Is the world’s food system collapsing?
This is a stupid PR stunt. Linux is great and all (using it now), but everything has its place. Just as it doesn't make sense to bundle 31 Cents ice cream with all Nike shoes, it doesn't make sense to stuff Linux down all motherboards. There's a time and a place for everything; and adding features we don't need to products is just going to drive their price up, increase their complexity (and vulnerability).

Oh, and the penguin inside me is screaming "Score another one for the good guys!"
Why Sega should launch a new console
Ask HN: Subscription web sites: How did you get your first customer?
Question for techies who started a web business with a subscription revenue model: How did you get your first customer?

I'm asking because I'm a typical shy coder: cranking out truckloads of Python code is not a problem, but socializing and having a big network of business contacts is. I'm still grooving on David Heinemeier Hansson's speech at Startup School, and I want to go the subscription route. And I believe that nothing will drive the evolution of a site better than having customers. How to get those early customers, though, looks right now to be a dark mystery. How have other techie folks overcome this problem and gotten those first few customers?
I would be interested to see if they did any sort of market research into whether people are interested in such a service. It doesn't seem like it will be all that useful for one of a kind/rare items.
I'm a little confused as to how they handle different types of products under an SKU.

For example, an iPhone with a short, abused life is going to carry a different market price than a nearly new one.

Or have I misunderstood the site?

edit: It seems they have quality categories when adding a product but they still seem discrete.
Fredric Bastiat - "The Law" - http://www.freeaudio.org/fbastiat/thelaw.html (audio book)
http://www.amazon.com/Law-Frederick-Bastiat/dp/1933550147/ (5 stars with 83 reviews so it's not just me)

It'll only take about forty minutes to finish.

If you go with a Teaching Company course I highly recommend their "Great Minds" series (though without a library it is a bit spendy):
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=470&;
But "grabbing" is a less-efficient solution. Just as moving the mouse around may be less efficient than typing on that keyboard; grabbing stuff to interact with them can be a waste of time. More intuitive != more productive; and the current problem (IMHO) with mobile devices is that they have such low efficiency rates that their productivity _despite_ the advantage of being always on and always with you still suffers (as a result of size, awkwardness, and time-consuming adaptations we need to use).
Boston Geeks: BarCampBoston3 (the free geek unconference) is this Saturday & Sunday.
"I'm not hosting the comments"

This is my main reason for not using Disqus. I don't want to lose comments is Disqus folds or gets bought by someone evil, I want easy and complete backups and restores, etc. Right now, my blog is my biggest time investment outside of my kids, and I'm leery of losing some control.
Hey Disqus-- what if you released a Wordpress plugin version of Disqus that used, say, web services to pull the content from disqus and serve it directly from the blog host? Solves the SEO problem and the JS problem.

For the "data security" problem, you could store a local copy of all the comments at the blog hosts, and a migration tool to port them back to wordpress native comments if someone leaves the service.
Danny Hillis tells us why Computer Science is no good.
I think this is pretty awesome. One of the things I do most often on eBay is check completed sales for items I own, to see what the opportunity cost of me hanging on to my stuff is. I was thinking a few weeks ago about how I needed a site that had a list of all my possessions(of the non-sentimental variety) and gave me updated values of their worth. I considered building one myself for about 5 minutes because I knew my skillset wouldn't be a good fit for this type of project. But am very glad to see someone has taken up the challenge. I think for young people and others without a whole lot of income, a site like this is very useful. I think there is a huge market here. Wigix is definitely a site to watch.
Sorry to disappoint. My goal isn't to provide a pop science oversimplification but rather lay the foundation for actually understanding the mathematics.
@Joshwa - terrific idea. I'd use that.
Go for it!!! Don't let anyone tell you that you are too old to do it.

I'm 36 - over-the-hill by startup standards ;-) - am married and have 2 kids.

The biggest issue to overcome is fear and losing the corporate financial/benefits lifeline (significant obstacles when you have kids).

But honestly, if you can handle kids you can handle a startup. I work all day while my kids are in school and then after they're asleep, I work more. The startup is kinda like another kid. It ain't easy and I won't deny the younger startup founder will have more energy and time. But don't forget that quality of time is a big, big factor! And if you LOVE what you're doing, tinkering on your product/business/whatever won't feel like work (even when it's consuming every waking hour that you're not dealing with the spouse or with the kids).

Feel free to ping me if you ever want to chat about it!
I found The Wisdom of Crowds hard to get through. Interesting subject matter, but the text just didn't flow for me.

"The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz was a great read.
Short answer: It is always acceptable to provide goods and services to those who are willing to buy it at a price that they are willing to pay for it.

There's been alot of anti-capitalist sentiment lately in the media, from stories about overpaid CEOs to record oil company profits. Simply put, if a person can not get fair market value for their good or service, they have no incentive to provide it. What is better: that which is expensive, or that which is not available?
I don't know you, and I could probably churn out a bunch of semi-valuable tips, but instead of doing that, I'm going to suggest the following: Find a partner that has the business skills you lack in marketing/sales/promotion.

I think you'll be much better off with someone like this worrying about these problems while you handle the technical realities. Once you get customers, the problems of getting them will seem trivial to the problem of keeping them.

Good luck.
if people aren't poor after you profit from them, you need a new business model
Open your product to beta testers, and hopefully once the beta period stops, a certain percentage of the testers will have built a reliance upon your software, and sign up to the paid account.

You can also use the testers for testimonials etc for your site. A referral fee will then help push your current customers to recommend it to their friends.

It'll be a lot easier to find people to sign up for free, then it will to sign them up immediately for a paid account.

You can then convert them later :)
> Is it acceptable to profit from the poor?

Haven't read the article, but ... yes, it's called 1) the labor market, and 2) the goods market