skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Building an analog computer in which you don't use 1s and 0s and instead use essentially all shades of gray in between is one of the things we're already working on," says Williams. These computers could do the types of things that digital computers aren't very good at –- like making decisions, determining that one thing is larger than another, or even learning."

How else do they think analog computers worked in the first place?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computers

You can implement that stuff with caps, op amps and resistors. I don't know, maybe the substances they use have better differential nonlinearity characteristics across temperature.

All you need is a transistor and the proper bias voltage to create a simple analog computer.
In San Francisco, 1400 dollars will barely get you a studio (in the interesting parts of the city).
Much of Apple's design aesthetic appeal is in its hardware. Microsoft has no control over the design of most of the hardware people use with its OS. The same goes for other OSes like Debian and FreeBSD. So, while I agree that MS Windows isn't the best-looking OS around, a significant chunk of Apple's advantage in the design arena has nothing to do with any mistakes on Microsoft's part -- unless you think it's a mistake to let one's OS run on other people's hardware. For a closed source shop like Microsoft (or Apple), that might be a reasonable argument, but it doesn't mean bad things about Microsoft's design choices -- just its business choices.
Richard Gabriel: The Why of Y (pdf)
One of the most important things I got out Startup School 08 was to exercise MORE often.
I'm chained to an 8-5 shift currently.

I do my "real" work (or at least interesting work) when I get home and work on my own projects.

Generally, I pick one task to focus on and pound away on it for a few hours. I am assisted in the process by an eclectic variety of background music depending on the focus and the tempo of progress being made.

If I begin feeling that no more progress can be made or that a different approach is necessary, I'll take a break or work on something else and let my brain stew on the previous project in the subconscious.
So you work at google i am guessing?
I'm not quite sure why stuff like this bothers me, but it does. Why would I, as a startup, want to attract this much attention for something that offers so little in return? Part of the competitive advantage of being a startup is that you're only known to the people that really matter: your customers. By the time any competitors figure out who you are, you are a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, and a lot wiser.

If you want media exposure, you're much better off picking up the telephone and calling up a newspaper. But this; this is just an easy way for VCs and competitors to keep a close eye on you. That makes me a bit paranoid.
I want to reiterate my advice to Xobni, Sell and run!
These guys are beasts they will make a copy of Xobni and make you history, remember Netscape.
Comments in Code Indicate Functions Trying To Escape
"Microsoft messed with the technology industry for a decade..."

He's talking like it's past tense. OOXML was just a few weeks ago. They worked hard for that bad reputation. And honestly given the billions they've made, I'm not sure I'd choose different.
Manhattan ranges - 1br in the West Village goes for $1,950/month.
Like I said, I think most of their products are good, maybe a couple are even great. I don't dislike them, I just wouldn't recommend their PCs to my aunt. That was more or less the point of my original post, which you found to be trolling, because you disagree with it.

I do dislike fanboys though. I don't know if you are one or not, but I'd guess you are by how offended you get over any implication that you might be. It's the same concept as homophobia. Me simply mentioning the existence of fanboys on my blog constitutes trolling to you.

Every fanboy at some point bought an Apple out of curiosity. Every one of them will say "I didn't want to be part of a club, I just wanted to see if their products were better." That's how marketing works. Nobody says "I bought Budweiser because I like talking frogs." But a lot of people buy Budweiser because they like talking frogs.

So if you agree with me that there are fanboys (and maybe you don't) just trust me when I say, they all think the same way as you. That doesn't mean you are one, of course.It just means that if you were, you wouldn't know it.
You know, as much as people say a Microsoft acquisition is inevitable ultimately diluting whatever spice Yahoo! may have left, I think there's a chance for Yahoo! to emerge with much more force.

With Buzz, Fire Eagle, etc., their recent dabbles with Google, exceeding revenue expectations, and the prospect of going under, this situation may serve to provide Yahoo! with motivational and creative drives to create really cool applications and services. The drive people can acquire when they realize the severity of the situation and what's at stake can be astonishing.

So, for me, I'd wait it out. Some really innovative things can come of this.
I suppose it's a little bit better than StarCraft,

They really need to start teaching kids something other than book smarts though.

How much would you value creativity vs book smarts vs diligence when hiring people?
Do anything that doesn't involve impact on those joints.
De-batching, or how to juggle too many balls
Maybe the fact that the "trippy video sequences" are pointless and lame, and the fact that the "song from the Shins" is awful, has something to do with it.
That seems like a really obvious troll.
https://sos-res.state.de.us/tin/GINameSearch.jsp

You have to pay $20 for all the information, but it's worth it.
ARGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

crackers giving the real hackers a bad name.
Advertising on TV just got easier with Google TV Ads
Kleiner Perkins creates $700M new fund, plus $500M for green investments
Why is it offensive? Are you a "fanboy", or are you just a Mac user? If the former, maybe you have a point -- maybe. On the other hand, I think you're probably just unaware of your hangups, considering that from what I've seen of Mac fanboys that commentary was on-target. If you're just a Mac user, on the other hand, the statement doesn't apply to you.

As for the iPhone . . . there may not be a better "smartphone" available right now, but I'm holding out for one anyway. There are just too many usability design flaws with the iPhone (and its competitors) for me to jump into smartphones yet.
An investor who wants the most return with the lowest risk will have a balanced portfolio across many asset classes, which would include both the Dow stocks and India and China in some fashion. That being said, the Dow companies already get a significant % of their earnings abroad. And this % is increasing.
So how does Google actually get slots on the TV networks to air my ad? Are they essentially buying LOTS of advertising slots from ABC/NBC/CBS etc?
This sounded so much cooler and way more clever back when I was 13.
The file syncing issue CANNOT be addressed effectively as a proprietary, closed system. Maybe there are companies out there who have the fortitude to create some sort of framework that can remain open enough to engender enough pan-device support to make it useful to real people who happen not to want to be stuck in the windows (or mac, or whatever) environment on all there electronic devices.
Good article about the experience of finding apartments:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/garden/24new.html?n=Top/Re...

Manhattan had a very successful policy of encouraging diversity by apartment subsidies (Mitchell-Lama). Otherwise, you restrict the area to only those who can "afford" it. I heard recently about someone who sold their apartment back to their rent-subsidized apartment building. A 3br on the Upper West Side. For $12,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell-Lama
I don't get spam in my feed reader because I select the feeds it's reading. Does RSS "cope with this thing we call the web"?

It would be great if I didn't have to select the feeds, if my feed reader would crawl the Web and show me things I like without forcing me to wade through heaps of crap. I don't think that's very realistic though, so it's still worth my effort to choose trusted data sources myself.

The same is true for many applications of the Semantic Web. If you want to buy a house, you won't send out a crawler looking for listings matching your criteria; you'll go to a site that aggregates real estate listings in your area. This isn't so different from how things work today.

Spam is a problem and fancy trust stuff is absolutely needed, but RDF & friends have a lot of value even without fancy trust stuff. The problem is (and has always been) convincing people with interesting data that they should publish it.
Web 2.0 Expo Presentation Rundown
Is this the end of spotrunner: the upcoming startup? http://www.spotrunner.com/
Thinkpads are easily as good as Macbooks. In fact, for my purposes, they're better. I'd certainly agree that most Toshiba, Sony, and Dell laptops suck, though -- and that Mac laptops are pretty good, for people whose OS of choice is MacOS X anyway (since Mac laptops are not designed with other OSes in mind). I'm a little annoyed with the insistence on one-button mouse design, the lack of an alternative pointing device interface (I like the trackpoint on my Thinkpad), and the shallow keystroke on the keyboard, for Mac laptops -- but in general the hardware is much better than that of the average Vaio or Inspiron laptop.

The iPhone might rule the market in terms of good design for a "smartphone" (or maybe some lesser-known competitor has caught up or even surpassed it), but there aren't any smartphones that have solved the major usability design flaws that keep me from buying an iPhone. At best, the iPhone is the best of a bad bunch.
There are some blogs(alleyinsider and techcrunch) that are saying a lot of the Yahoos are only waiting until the merger goes through since some contract clause would kick in to accelerate their pay, vest their options, etc.

If this were true I'd imagine I'd stay until the acquisition and then move on to greener pastures.
Funnily enough, we have just recommended a mac mini to my mum+dad in law. Their current Dell is away being repaired after being infected for the umpteenth time. They are sick of it and just want something that works. Their usage is pretty much web/email/office, which the mac mini does without any issues.

I completely agree there are fanboys. My personal definition would be "Someone who promotes an obviously dud product as being great, out of overzealous brand loyalty".

For example, someone who loves Microsoft who argues about how much better the Zune is than other mp3 players, is quite likely to be a fanboy, because I think the overwhelming evidence is that the Zune is a dud product.

Your mentioning fanboys on the blog wasn't trolling in itself, it was the complete generalizations of all Apple users that was trolling. "Apple has created a club, and the people in it genuinely look down on others for not being a member."

The reason people get offended when you call them a fanboy is because you are effectively saying they are liars. You are accusing them of lying about their review of the product.
Gas prices argument was particularly lame.
Ask YC: What's the policy for founders who have student visa?
I'd like to know the policy on someone who's co-founding a US startup, and has a US student visa?
Any input would be helpful.
Ironically, you go into great depth about actual quality versus fanboy-targeted marketing, making a very strong case -- then indicate that you use the "default" fanboy-targeted open source OS family (Linux). Okay, so it's not exactly the same, but I was thinking that your choices sound exactly like mine until you said "I use Linux on a Thinkpad."

Of course, that was me three years ago, so I don't have much room to mock anyone.
Calling people fanboys is saying they are lying. That's why it's offensive.

I just use whatever product happens to work the best. Don't care what brand it is.

I agree, I expect the smartphone market to heat up quite a bit now, it'll be interesting to see who can match the iPhone.
http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

(using your tendency to procrastinate to work for you)
Good article... and it reminds me of the messes that I've had to clean up at various jobs; in every case, the people who were working the insanely long hours weren't getting as much done as I was, and since I was getting my work done, I had to clean up their messes. The people working the 80+ hour work weeks typically ended up causing more harm than good, and also typically got more rewards and respect from the management because of their "dedication" to the job.

Never mind that most of the code they wrote didn't work until someone else fixed it.
Did you happen to notice that jrockway doesn't use MS Windows? Perhaps you should read the last line of jrockway's post before insinuating hypocrisy with a reference to Microsoft.
Jared Diamond has an interesting piece in the NY Times where he discusses consumption factors - the point of it is is that if every single person on Earth consumed at the level of an American, it would be as if the population of the world would be around 70 billion americans. Just something to ponder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html
I can second this whole-heartedly. Especially the point about motivation. I find the lack of sleep really kills my willpower and I end up being really unable to do anything that doesn't interest me.
Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."
Yahoo is still a multi billion dollar company; I think it’s unfair to talk about as a small shop. What ever happen to Yahoo, employees are still much better off than in most places.
The iPhone has a qwerty :/ I can type almost as fast as on my laptop using the iPhone...

I guess it's just a case of what you prefer.
Mike Cox is a known Usenet troll. Please do not feed.
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with the original author. Warren's logic is circular and seems to be preying on people's inability to conceive of very large numbers. I'd fully expect DJIA to continue growing at roughly the same pace this century as the last.

Even if it doesn't, though, everyone knows that the trick to successful investment is to buy low and sell high. There are still plenty of opportunities to buy low - even with limited risk - in large emerging economies. The U.S. may become a low-risk capital preservation stock and China will become the higher-risk investment stock.
I don't think those statements imply that all users of Apple products are fanboys. You're reading into it what isn't there.

Also . . . I think being a "fanboy" isn't dependent on the object of fandom being a "dud". One can just as easily be a "fanboy" for something good as for something bad. It's the attitude that makes a "fanboy", not the product.

If Apple turned out nothing but crap for the next two years and you continued to defend it, you'd be a "fanboy". If it turned out nothing but crap for the next two years and you immediately jumped ship to, say, a Thinkpad running FreeBSD, or just stuck with your two year old better-quality Apple products because you liked what Apple did before it went down the tubes, you wouldn't be an Apple "fanboy".

If the product is a "dud", that makes it easier to identify the "fanboys", but it's not the deciding factor.

Also . . . I think implicit in the label of "fanboy" is that the only lying they do is to themselves. They really believe what they tell everyone else. If someone's lying to others, that's not fanboyism -- it's called being a shill.
starting at 50-60 in San Diego, CA, graduated from UCSD. Mostly from web programming jobs (php, rails, and java).
I don't think I characterize all Apple users that way. Just a large number, though not a large percentage. Direct quote: "That’s how big Apple has become in the minds of many of their users. Not all, and probably not even a majority, especially if you count people who only own an iPod." You seem to automatically lump yourself into that group even though two days ago I had no idea who you were, and then get offended.

Actually, the Zune v 2. looks pretty good. It's got 4 stars on Amazon and an 8.3 on CNET, which is identical in both cases to the 80GB iPod. Don't you think it's a little disengenuous to say "the overwhelming evidence is that the Zune is a dud product"? Seems the evidence is its as good as an iPod. Doesn't it seem a little Apple fanboyish to write it off as a dud?
Chart of the Day: A Breakdown of Facebook Applications
Calling people fanboys is saying they are lying. That's why it's offensive.

Only to themselves. If they were lying to others, they'd be shills -- not fanboys.

Also . . . I don't think he was calling all Apple users "fanboys". He was just pointing out that there are a lot of Apple fanboys, and discussing their culture. You don't have to be an Apple fanboy to use Apple products, though. If you truly just use whatever happens to work best for you, and that happens to be Apple products in some cases, that doesn't make you a fanboy.
I don't think you can make that assumption unless you have preferred stock.
Another explanation: Penguins rule the universe (http://xeny.net/PenguinsRuleTheUniverse).
>So 16 must have died.

16 out of 80 is 20%, when you say "must have", does it mean once you gave them money you forgot about them, Or it simply means that 20% is acceptable?
I really like the idea, but you have some work to do.

Your filter to lookup by region is not working correctly. If I select Calgary and Edmonton company comes up. Also Cambrian house that is located in Calgary and is in the Database, does not show up.

Also the filter usability is a bit strange. You add a filter and you can see all the pretty AJAX do it's thing, but the fucking thing does not change the results until you click filter...
That is true. Good engineers will always rise above the bad ones, regardless of what background they have. But we are talking about starting salaries here.
Hey, my lot in life isn't too bad! :-) I launched a non-profit project that's fairly important to me (http://openphotovr.org) this winter. Now thinking about starting something else, for money, not sure what exactly.
My rule: If you do what your body was made to do, and you do it in balance you'll feel better and be more healthy. It's a bitter pill to swallow for our generation, but our bodies weren't meant to sit looking at a screen 12 hours a day.
I'm a competitive ultimate player, and I really like my sport. I'm just saying, excercise like everything else is not an unalloyed good. My achy knees today after practice yesterday are evidence.
I also enjoyed the vast majority of the article, but I have to admit the last paragraph was annoying. It just seems like everything Joel writes these days (since he started his Road Show) is Submarine.[1]

I realize everyone is going to talk about what they are doing, and Joel does Fog Creek, but I can't help getting that greasy used-car salesman feeling. I don't own Joel, and he owes me nothing, but it still makes me sad, because I used to enjoy his blog so much.

Really it just seems like that article should have been two. One about architecture astronauts, which was quite insightful and amusing, and one about the annoyance of competing on salary with Google/MSFT. Putting them together just makes Article #2 looking like the hidden motive for Article #1, which makes it seem like he didn't really mean the stuff he said for #1, he just said it to segue into #2.

And as for his salary issues: I thought Joel's whole deal was that he hired rockstars and treated them like Made Men. Salary isn't the only component of that, and probably not even the most important. Complaining about bigger players offering higher salaries is like complaining that some people are born richer. Complaining about it gets you nothing. You don't compete with someone by playing to their strength. You compete by playing to their weakness. All he has to do is keep trumpeting about his sweet office space and small team/fun environment, and he will have plenty of rockstars.

Oh, and thanks for the JWZ link. I love his stuff!

[1] If anyone doesn't know what I mean by Submarine... here ya go:
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Security by obscurity works best sometimes
All right. I have deleted it. Thanks for letting me know.
follow-up question to #1: which qualities are successful to the startup's success? I've read essays where you say determination is more important than intelligence; would you add anything else to that?
Here's hoping! ;P
I lack the determination to pack up and move. :-( But I suspect I'll leave eventually. Don't know where.
Or (dare I say it out loud)... Porn.
Mommy, I can't wait 5-8 years for this utterly game changing technology... I want it NOW! I want it nowWwWWwwWw!!!
This "1900 to 2000" trend people are extrapolating from is a myth. Stocks, as a broad category, have historically not been a great investment. Almost all the gain in that period happened in the last 20 years. If you break equity returns down into all possible 40 year periods returns were lousy.

This is taking the index numbers at face value. Better assessments of returns using good inflation numbers and incorporating tax liabilities make the picture much worse.
http://www.itulip.com/realdow.htm

Finally, the real sample size goes back much farther than 1900. We have good equity price data back into the 18th century. 80% market crashes were common. Overall returns were not good.

Stocks were cheap in 1980. Then they soared in price for 20 years. Now people are slow to realize that period was exceptional. Investing is about "buy low, sell high" not "stick your money in stocks." Stocks are high. The smart money bought commodities in the early 70s, changed to bonds in the early 80s, changed to stocks in the early 90s, and changed back to commodities in the early 2000s. That smart investor has absolutely crushed an equity fixated investor. This isn't rocket science, either. It's not that hard to review asset classes once a decade and figure out what's very cheap and what's expensive.
Yeah,. we are going to work on getting the filters right in our next iteration. They even confuse me ;)

It might have been smarter to leave them off alltogether, but we didn't.. we'll get to it quickly.
A network graph of Corporate America
Which is why no fanboy realizes that they are a fanboy. Except my friend Russ. He wears the badge with pride.
No, malice requires intent.
Make your users happy or die. The importance of engaging your customer.
... and sufficiently clever malice is indistinguishable from incompetence.
I think they just tried aping Apple's marketing (aesthetically) while totally not understanding why it worked. They don't have Microsoft Stores, so they borrowed Stussy. Jet was taken, so they went with the Shins.

They're not building their own cool club, they're just trying to get into Apple's.
Taffy DB version 1.4
I know front end isn't always the biggest topic here but JavaScript is very powerful for both front and backend. I just launched version 1.4 (4th improvement since March 10th) of Taffy DB and put together a little article showing how useful TaffyDB can be.
Same here. When my bank tries to sell me on managed funds, I like to tell the rep that the guy that draws Dilbert told me in his book to just invest in index funds. Then, when they try to attack my logic for listening to a cartoonist when it comes to money advice, I rip apart the performance of their managed funds with respect to the index ones.
The ERP Money-Back Guarantee