skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yahoo shareholders should notice couple of things that i think is important to know:
1. "your hand-picked nominees to take control of Yahoo! for the express purpose of trying to force a sale of Yahoo! to a formerly interested buyer" --- if the new Icahn's board is only interested in selling the company then it could be dangerous as MS may not show any interest to buy yahoo or may offer low price, in either case it is not beneficial to sharholders.

2. "Following that meeting we also provided to Microsoft a list of key non-price deal terms that our board believed were critical items to be addressed in a deal to provide reasonable protections for our stockholders." --- i wish Yahoo explained what were the non-price deal terms, nevertheless it shows that they (yahoo) did due-diligence very well.
Speaking as a trader at a major Wall Street firm... if you want a job that will allow you to relax, or if you aren't interested in "working to stay ahead," it's best to stay away from trading. Seriously. The hours aren't quite as bad as the investment banking/corporate finance guys, but I work 13+ hours a day, and my hours are not atypical for a junior guy. If you aren't going to work as hard as the competition, you'd better find some way to be smarter than them.

If you are interested in getting into option trading, make sure you understand it cold. Know what delta, gamma, vega, and theta are. Understand the relationship between these parameters and the price of an option: be able to explain it intuitively, and be able to derive the relationship from an option pricing formula. Understand implied volatility and the connection between vol and option prices. Build a simple Black-Scholes pricer to allow you to compute your own implied vol. Know why the vol surface has the shape it does. Make sure you realize that volatility is directional: vol goes up when markets go down. If you are playing index options vs. single-name options, make sure you understand your correlation risk. The list goes on and on.

Options are interesting, though, because they allow you to trade volatility. Vol is a more complicated thing than simple price movement, so if you understand it well you could have an edge over your competition.

Finally... I think trading is a good job choice for young, ambitious, and numerically minded people. Seems like there are a lot of readers like that here... maybe I'll write a more detailed article about this sort of thing later.
I was in your shoes couple of years ago and was researching for an application to do prototyping and storyboarding. I ran into an open source project called Denim coming out of University of Washington. I never got the chance to use it though. Good luck and here's the homepage is:

http://dub.washington.edu:2007/projects/denim/
If you don't own them outright then your financial obligations actually give you less freedom. When you have nothing to lose, that's when you swing for the fences.
To make the greatest success of anything you must be able to concentrate your entire thought upon the idea you are working on. Concentration, like any skill, needs to be practiced. To practice concentration and focus, do only one thing at a time.

When eating, focus on your meal and turn off the computer; when driving, focus on the road and turn off the car radio. Anything you find yourself doing, try to do that and eliminate all distractions (sometimes this is impossible).

Your body should also be in a healthy state, thus exercise is of the utmost importance, 2-3 times a day for 45 mins seems to do it for me.

The food you eat and substances you consume have tremendous impacts on your mental state. Avoid meat, alcohol, cigarettes, pungent and spicy foods. Eat mild, bland foods and you'll begin to notice a clarity of mind and increased ability to focus.

Finally, for 15 minutes every other day, sit in a quiet location and meditate. This will increasingly clear your mind, allow you to manage your energy and multiply your ability to concentrate and focus.

The greatest man would accomplish nothing if he lacked concentration.
I recently reached the end of my 10-year plan and let me tell you, it's more like "teach yourself programming in a lifetime" because if there's anything I've learned it's that there's always more to learn.

And if you don't have any "problems" anymore, you're not trying too hard... or you've solved every problem there is to solve.
Property Stampede Releases to Private Beta
Ask YC: How many fair percentage for Hacker and Non Hacker?
I start startup with my friends, i am the only hacker, two other guy is designer and marketer. Our product is in development phase.

All technical thing handled by me, survey and choose right technology, choose right hosting, code, set up server, maintain code and server.

Right now, we are all (three) have same company stock. Is this fair for me?
I opted for changing my DNS servers. That really isn't the point though. I believe Verisign was prevented from doing similar things several years ago.
I think you mashed the wrong link with your mouse machine.

You meant to add a comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=190676
Aren't insomnia and excitation the point?

Funny to see insomnia listed as a side effect of Provigil.
That really depends on what you want to do. For most webapps, the algorithm you need already exists in a library, and your job is to tap into it.

For those apps that require serious algorithmic innovation, your best bet is to start with a math degree, or (at the very least) a profound interest in mathematics.
In regard to provigil...from what I understand it helps you to stay awake more than it does improve your concentration. It's also relatively expensive from what I remember. It doesn't seem like the most cost effective way to improve your focus/performance.

I agree with gcheong, exercise is a good way to maintain focus. In fact, doing something difficult (and hopefully productive) on a daily basis is a great way to increase your personal discipline, which leads to more focus. Try to force yourself to exercise, read or do anything that you don't generally want to do every day. The confidence and work ethic you build could translate into improved studying and focus. (I know it sounds crazy, but some people say it works)
i totally agree with you - also if you're trying to get my baby (for whatever reason and price) then I would certainly make sure that my baby grows healthy, but the history says that chances of growing healthy with microsoft is very rare. Yang would also make sure that people (shareholders, employee and end-users) who love my baby so much today, keeps loving in the future as well - but it looked like only one person was loving the deal and other two (employees and end-users) were certainly not that happy with the deal so....
What To Expect From Apple At WWDC
Big Payday for Web 2.0
Finally, my Photoshop skills improved and I discovered my new favorite font: Trebuchet MS

This made me chuckle.
I completely agree. It's tragic how little we value the strengths and contributions of people who just happen to be younger than 18.

True story - I met Robert Epstein's lawyer in Shay's yesterday. He hit on me and insulted my boyfriend. I have his card right here.
Sleep Hacking Produces Results -- For a Time
Congrats Dharmesh!
TSX Venture Exchange Entrepreneurial Bootcamp
I wanted to at least point someone in the right direction. I figured it was a better course of action than pointing them to PHP.

You're certainly correct. 6-9 months of learning how to build a web app does not a hacker make. A more accurate title would have been: Baby steps to hackerdom by learning the very basics of web programming.

The journey to Rome begins with the first step.
Why isn't the Monte Carlo fallacy true?

;~)
Facebook's Big Facelift
Yeah, I appreciate the feedback. After a majority of the comments have said, I think it is in my best interest to focus on and finish my web app. If it is a success, then great, if not it will look great on my resume.
Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked
Throw caution to the wind and move to the Silicon Valley. You will figure it out here.

If you over analyze you will still be around your "midwestern state school" worrying about finding a job where there are few.
Growing Number Fall Behind On Energy Bills
Sorry, I was indeed prompted to submit this article after reading that one.

I remembered reading this slate article a while ago, and thought it had more background and was better written.

Is it better etiquette to mention a related article as a comment instead of a new submission?
It's all in how you phrase the question, isn't it? Your analysis is right if we're talking about how a person's score on a driving test stacks up against the average score, gp's is right if we're talking about how people rank themselves among the population of all drivers (i.e., if 9/10 drivers think they're in the top five, then there are at least 4 delusional people).
It appears hugely likely that this is intentional.
Of course it makes sense. Trading options takes something people don't want (a particular exposure to a particular set of cash flows) and turns it into something they do want (a different kind of exposure to a different set of cash flows). If people they were indifferent to sets of cash flows, markets wouldn't work.

Here is one incredibly obvious way that you're wrong: if you ran an airline, you might be worried that a sudden spike in fuel prices would bankrupt you. They could use futures to speculate that prices would go up, so they'd be indifferent to price changes -- an increase of $X in fuel costs would give them an increase of $X in futures profits. Suddenly, they are a more stable company -- people are more willing to work for them, banks are willing to lend them more money, passengers are more likely to participate in frequent flier programs, airports would be more likely to consider them for long-term spots, etc. Somehow, everyone on that side of the transaction benefits. And lo! The speculator on the other side, betting that prices will go down, is able to do so directly, rather than by indirect means such as buying stock in an unhedged airline and exposing himself to the vagaries of that industry. Even if he loses money in the end, he has what he wants when he makes the trade. However, I needn't restrict myself even to people making business decisions through the futures markets: even a compulsive gambler trading pork bellies is not a compulsive gambler getting drunk at casinos or playing illicit card games. In short, it's a very sanitary sort of gambling (this was not always the case -- in the 1920's, traders at the then-outdoor American Stock Exchange drank constantly to keep warm. This explains a lot).

It is trivial to declare that some business is zero-sum or negative sum. Even retail is a series of zero-sum transactions: I had $5 and the restaurant had a burger, now I have $5 worth of burger and the restaurant has $5 worth of cash. Even, minus time and taxes. And yet, for the most part, our bias is to quite correctly assume that when people voluntarily hand over billions of dollars, some of them becoming poorer and some of them become quite richer in the process, they may be doing something rational. The fact that rich countries develop stock exchanges, and that the development of stock exchanges correlates with future wealth, is not a coincidence.
I find that I have the opposite problem: intense concentration and the ability to stay up for long periods of time. I have to take Tylenol PM just to conform to a normal sleep schedule. I don't know exactly what my natural bodily cycle is, but it is definitely longer than 24 hours.
Anyway, every asset can be described as a set of options (I dare you to name something you can sell for cash that you can't theoretically analyze as an option). So by arguing against options, you're arguing against all commerce.
Ask YC: Best language/framework for comet intensive app
I'm looking at building a web-based chat app. Instead of having clients poll the server (ajax) I would rather use comet to have the server push updates to the clients.

I've looked at a few implementations, lift (http://liftweb.net/index.php/Main_Page), turbogears using orbited (http://brbx.com/orbited/).

It's still in the planning phases, no language chosen yet. Just wondering what others have found success with.
You can legally order Adrafinil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrafinil) in the US, and it metabolizes into Modafinil (Provigil).

I tried it once, and didn't seem to do much for me.

If you want to give it a shot, it's available under the brand name 'Olmifon' online.
DENIM is quite cool. A bit quirky last time I used it, but really handy.

However, it seemed to get wonky with 10+ pages in a site.

Maybe that's changed.

Works really well with a tablet interface, though a plain mouse will work too.
Believe me, it has also been a thought in the back of my mind. Any suggestions as where to start if I went that route?
It has nothing to do with safety, it has to do with PR for the so-called war on drugs.

If they were legal it would be easy to find a doctor to supervise your enhancement regimen, making it safer. As it is, people still take them, without medical supervision.

And sports profit from that. How many millions did Baseball make off McGwire and Bonds breaking the home run record? Fan interest went way up. And NFL players are plenty juiced.

There are numerous types of steroids, with different side-effects and levels of safety. Then there are banned substances like HGH, which is extremely beneficial with no significant side-effects for most people in reasonable dosages.

Further proof it's a PR stunt and not about safety: Weed is banned. It's about a million times safer than getting sacked by one of those linebackers. If they care about safety they should switch to Flag Football.
I'd agree with parts of your assertions. I tend to learn how things by diving in as well. But, I geared the post towards people who were starting from scratch. If one of those people tried to pick up RoR or Django, they would be hopelessly lost. So, This was intended to at least give them a direction.

Also, I posted the time frames to give an estimate of how long it would take to gain a basic grasp of the tools mentioned. I might have to edit to post to reflect that.
Right, sorry options are zero sum in a money sense, but not in a utility sense. If I write a covered call on shares that I own and a speculator buys it, we both might end up with returns distributions that are preferable to what we had before and so expected utility of wealth is increased though wealth itself perhaps isn't.

Also you have to remember that when options mature in the money they will be exercised resulting in transactions in the actual stock market which is more obviously not zero sum.

So suppose I think Yahoo is under-priced at the moment. I could
1. Purchase a share of Yahoo on the open market, exerting buy pressure on the stock driving up the price

2. Purchase a call on Yahoo; Yahoo's price appreciates some if I'm right putting my call option in the money. If the option writer was naked, they have to go to the open market to purchase a share for me to buy, resulting in buy pressure on the stock driving up the price.

Obviously the link in #2 is not as direct, but potentially prices in the actual stock market can move to incorporate information in the purchases and sales of option contracts as they are exercised. And one step further removed a long equities trader might use the size of the outstanding call and put options market on a stock to forecast price changes.
I'm 42 with a 4 year old daughter and doing it. It was very painful until we got our app functional as using the app itself helped me get a lot more done in less time. The most important thing is to have sufficient money to take the plunge - I ended up selling all my art and my yacht to keep going through the hard period.
Configuring Automated backup with TimeVault
Google App Engine Blog: App Engine Launcher for Mac OS X
Any reason why you want to use a push system instead of a pull one?
I titled the post "Learn how to hack..." because of the "Ask YC: How do I become a hacker?" posts that keep coming up, not because I think that following these steps will make you a hacker. When people ask, "How do I become a hacker?" on this forum, they tend to mean, "How do I make web apps?" and that's the question that I answered.

I tried to correct that in some of the edits.
wow. This is an amazing story, and possibly one of the coolest things I've read on the internet in quite some time.

Thank you.
Slightly offtopic: this thread showed up as dead earlier today. Was it resurrected?
Greenspunning for a better life
Yes - I've thought about the same thing. Unfortunately I'm in Europe.
Unhappy hour - no time for testing
They prefer to maneline heroin.
It amazes me that a guy with a nobel prize was willing to be told to go run to the store to pick up office supplies because a 20-something told him to. Or be willing to learn a whole new field (EE/CS) on a whim.

And this really amazes me: "Since the only computer language Richard was really familiar with was Basic, he made up a parallel version of Basic in which he wrote the program and then simulated it by hand to estimate how fast it would run on the Connection Machine."

With no CS background he wrote a version of Basic that scaled up to 16,000 CPUs ... most CS PHd's would find that non-trivial. And he did it in a few weeks.

I guess that's what makes Feynman Feynman.

Oh, this is pretty funny too: http://www.fleen.com/uploads/2007/11/what-would-richard-feyn...
When we were going to say hi to you on the pre-Startup School dinner, we were joking that we should corner you and ask ALL the questions we have, existential or otherwise ("why am I here", "what is the meaning of life", "what is the best color" etc) :-)
It’s finally official: XP is coming to the XO
The Top N lists feel so much like digg. Books are pretty personal decisions - the first page included a few large, challenging books that personally I couldn't be bothered with, and it really felt like stuff was shoehorned in just because it was "supposed" to be there. But I have read other large challenging books and been rewarded, so maybe that's just me.

Personally I'd recommend

- read more than 100 books.

- read "Catch 22" - the blurb here does not do justice to how funny the book is. I still remember how much my sides hurt.
The easiest way to get involved with an open source project is to find one you like and then hit someone up to find out more.

Depending on your interests and skill set, we're always looking for help with Miro (http://getmiro.com/).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
Dear Lord, I enjoy a good pun once in a while, but please leave the pun threads at reddit. :P
Come on, he wouldn't just hard-code his mini-me!
I just saw your reply, yet someone else had posted the link to the article I was referring to. Did you READ the context that the question was asked in? It was formulated as an ASK PG QUESTION YOU JACKASS . . . how stupid do you feel now? Oh, and I see that you got your buddies to upmod you . . . NIIIICEEEEE
"Nothing made [Feynman] angrier than making something simple sound complicated."

"Because even when Richard didn't understand, he always seemed to understand better than the rest of us. And whatever he understood, he could make others understand as well. Richard made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult. He was never afraid of telling the truth, and however foolish your question was, he never made you feel like a fool."

Great article. I didn't know Danny Hillis was such a talented writer. I love reading Feynman's books and about him because it gives me a glimpse of what the world looks like to a creative genius (which is closer to a child than an adult) and how intelligence can be applied to any problem.
" ... to treat ADD, the disease of being unable to focus."

ADD may be more of a problem of inappropriate focus.

It would also help to know if the cause of one's poor focus is indeed neurochemical, and if dopamine levels are the issue (tho that may be quite hard to determine except though experimentation).
Apophasis FTW!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis
own == own outright. Otherwise the bank owns them in reality !

Swing for fences means "take a chance" I assume ?
it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish--

-- for wireframes, showing what info in what form, and information design sketches: omnigraffle, indesign

-- for full-on mockups, prototyping ui elements that need more polish, typography and overall design comps: photoshop/illustrator

-- for interactive prototyping, demonstrating an interaction paradigm: html/prototype/scriptaculous, dreamweaver's templated JS functions (MM_swapimg, etc), or a good-old-fashioned paper prototype/whiteboard

Your project will require one or more of these different fidelities of prototype, depending on what you have in mind.
I hate to agree with "artofmanliness.com", but aside from the obligatory Ayn Rand bullshit, the list wasn't too bad.
I tried polyphasic sleep for about 3 or 4 days and failed miserably - I could never fall asleep for the naps. Anyone here tried it and had success with it?
That's actually an interesting approach. I have noticed that when I have a good idea in the evening as I get ready for bed, I need to get it on paper, and I keep thinking about it overnight.

The next day I can't help but work on it.
New tech jobs, houses spur S.F. population in 2007
As a former ~11-year-old radio repairman, I don't think Feynman picked up EE at the age of god knows how old on a whim.
It's a difficult thing but this is how I do it

Get yourself a nice table and chair, no leather or anything special but one with an upright back. Posture is important

Next, don't use incandescent lamps, use flourescent lights instead. White light is neutral on the eyes and makes it easier to work.

Get a quiet environment or get yourself noise canceling headphones like the Bose QC ones.

Plug away at work, you will definitely reach a point when you will get engrossed and lose track of time. Now you're in the zone.

Alternately, practicing meditation daily for 10 minutes in the morning and the evening helps. Breathing rhythms are very important for relaxation and concentration.
I am wary to see any politics on News.YC, but that was an excellent read.
I'm not convinced yet, but I don't want to make this argument longer. It wasn't my intention to make you or anybody lose time (sorry if I did, truly!), I just thought you were pointing something that failed to be true and that I could correct you in a friendly manneer. Your comment is interesting and I'll think about it, but as far as I could see it seems to work only in particular cases and not in all negative cases, as you had pointed before. But I need to think more about it to be sure. Thanks for your time and for your explainations.
Was #6 missing?
Have you all contributed equal start up capital?
Even not having a finished product, just work as much as possible - have proven code you can show companies, understand why it would work, understand how it would scale, etc. and it will prove you can work in the real world.

Also start ups tend to look for smart people over someone with 20 years of experience - if you kick ass at what you do, you'll get a job you want.
Pen and paper? E-gads man!

Yes, of course wire-frame with _pencil_ and paper. I was specifically thinking of a tool that could show some design patterns -- typography, color schemes, use of white space, and then help put together a static page.

Just something as a calling card/vision tool, something to give an idea of what the user experience and benefits would be like with the completed product.

In a busy/crowded market, it seems to me that interface design is more important than ever.
Where do you buy it from?