skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No pro designer would come up with what Patrick has now, and yet it works.

No pro designer would have come up with the new one, either. Any designer worth anything could have told you that the old logo was way better than the new one. The old logo has its problems, but it communicates exactly what it needs to. (And I think it's actually the strongest point of the entire page.) The 99designs logo is such a step back I really have no idea where to start. It communicates absolutely nothing. The image is generic, meaningless, and (in my opinion) ugly. The text is small and (especially in the context of the whole page) very hard to find and read.

It's really important to realize that design doesn't mean "nice looking" and it doesn't mean "professional". Those are the means to an end, not the end itself. Design is about purpose, and the reason the original logo is so much better than the new one is because the old logo makes clear exactly what BCC is and what it's for and the 99designs logo doesn't.

It's also really important to realize that you're designing for an audience, and Patrick's audience is teachers. They aren't generally going to care if the logo (or the rest of the site, even) screams 2002. If you're trying to sell to artists and designers you're going to have to put more work into making your logo look nice, but here it's really not what's most important.

Design is a lot deeper than aesthetics, and there are a ton of different things that have to go into a logo design. The takeaway from this shouldn't be that engineering trumps design: the 99designs logo is hardly designed at all, and you're not going to find many genuinely good designers at a place like 99designs.
10 years ago I worked with a few coworkers on a protein search algorithm through the PDB (finding structure motifs with flexible and more stable components). It was a multi-month effort and our tool eventually vanished into the failed venture backed bio company. This type of problem is trivial compared to energy minimization (simulated structure) efforts.

Mapping problems to an interface where thousands or millions of humans and computers can tackle them generates a sense of awe each time I read about it.
This is true. But it means that none of these people will ever pay tax again going forward.
There's no /dev/dsp on Fedora. This should be a more portable solution:

dd if=/dev/urandom bs=176400 count=3 | play -t raw -r 44100 -e signed-integer -b 16 -c 2 -\

play is a part of the SoX software (Sound eXchange, the Swiss Army knife of audio manipulation).
Google Buys Slide for $182 Million, Getting More Serious about Social Games
I do. Depending if it needs sketches or not I either Simplenote or Jot!
But you are suggestion everyone "opt out". chaos would ensue.
plentyoffish does not fall into the established / founded in the early web category.

What all these sites have in common is that they provide the visitor with something they want. No need for fancy graphics if you have something to offer that they cannot get elsewhere (for free).
As a single founder I can confirm that I have a massive amount of freedom, agility, and efficiency. Minimized need to spend time communicating or convincing or debating. My think-do loop and action latency are minimized. I'm allowed to act on and leverage any and all insights I may have. Minimized bureaucracy and paperwork. Minimized chance that somebody else can fuck me over or let me down. Is it perfect? No. You lose some things but I think what you gain is much more important at the earliest stages of a business, especially when small or prerevenue.

Talking with others is good. Drawing on other's talents is good, but ideally it's done in a tactical way where you're still in control and can make the ultimate yes/no decisons to go forward, and retain ability to pivot. And yes, single founder prob most feasible when you have biz skills and tech skills (enough). If not, co-founders look more attractive.
So design follows function and function follows the needs of your customer. A bit obvious, but true.
Having lived both places SF feels like the place where new ideas meet with the least resistance. In New York I'm more inclined to want to go out and ogle girls in summer dresses, but NY is a very inspiring place to live, no doubt.
"Gory" detail, I like it.
Galois Video: Performance of Data Intensive, Irregular Applications
An imagined future with no grounding in the present is as useful as an oil rig on a hot air balloon. ;-) Keep inventing the future...but ignore the Luddites at your own peril.
I absolutely love it.

It truly has changed huge portions of my life. I initially bought it somewhat second guessing myself thinking I was buying an over-expensive toy that I would regret, but have changed my mind drastically. Now someone would have to pry it away from me.

My laptop used to be tied to me wherever I was in my house, but now it has essentially become a desktop because I have almost no use for it. It is larger, clunkier, gets very hot in my lap, has far shorter battery life, etc. I had a netbook but almost never used it because it was so slow it was unbearable. To jump into a browser and get to GMail was a few minute endeavor which quickly left me so frustrated I'm surprised the thing did not end up out my window.

The iPad is fantastic for most of my everyday things such as checking my email, web browsing, etc. It's always on and FAST, so I am never frustrated as I was with my netbook. I no longer have to take my laptop with me on trips as the iPad will suffice in most scenarios. If I'll be gone for awhile, I bring a bluetooth keyboard and have iSSH which I can use to connect to any of my servers on the road. Once I've got an SSH session open, it is not really much different from using a laptop. When I'm on a plane, I can spin up multiple movies back to back and its 10+ hour battery life means that I'll almost never run it out by the time I land. No laptop could compare to that and it is in such a small, convenient package.

I still use my "real" computers for development, but for almost everything else, I use my iPad. In fact, it is very nice to separate my development from my time-wasting viewing. Now I do nothing but development on my laptop and have my iPad for casual browsing. That separation is very nice.

And one of the uses I did not anticipate when I first got it is the photo sharing aspect. Now anytime I am with family or friends and I mention something such as a trip I took, I can pull the iPad out (I take it with me everywhere because it is compact enough...I did not do the same with my laptop) and casually flip through photos, giving them visuals to accompany my stories.

My latest "killer app" is OmniFocus; their iPad implementation is stellar. It truly has changed my workflow and my ability to keep things prioritized. I previously was using the iPhone version of the app doubled on the iPad and it just wasn't all that great.

I would seriously recommend one of these to most family/friends looking to pick up a computer because it would do everything they need and be quite a value. My sister asked for a recommendation on a computer and was looking at some systems that were $1000+. Since all she does essentially is check her email and browse the web, I coaxed her into getting an iPad. She saved a few hundred dollars and has loved the device far more than a laptop. For more developer types, it is less viable as a replacement and more of a lifestyle augment, but it was a purchase I would make again in a second.
Pick up a project based on your area of interest. Learn by getting your hands dirty. This will be interesting and hence you will definitely focus more. Also in the long run such projects will help in your startup path.
http://www.alexa.com/topsites -> http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top-1m.csv.zip
I got the same weird multiplication problem.
Yea I can't figure that one out, it seems to be only on firefox.
The government invests billions of dollars in lots of projects that get sidelined. Just look at Afghanistan.
50% of my screen was taken up by crap I didn't go there to see.
The title is talking about SF. There are seasons within neighborhoods of SF proper.
Weird Things People Have Been Arrested
It’s not really a secret that there’s a lot of crime in the world. But take a look some weird arrested.
It happened to me on Chrome.
JoliCloud 1.0 OS Is Here To Make Your Netbook Usable
You don't have to make millions either, if you make 100's of thousands or 10's of thousands with an 'ugly' site (tarnsap not all that long ago was a nice example of an 'ugly' but money making website, my own site is another one).

Why limit the lesson to an arbitrary monetary cut-off. Ugly does not mean that you're going to be burning cash without a return, and the fact that there are such sites that make millions make it perfectly clear that there need not be an upper limit to what you can achieve with an 'ugly' website.

Design is important, but you can overcome a bad design with a customer need.

The question to ask then becomes, what could you do if your site looked good and you had a customer need?
True, but the error is more of a mis-choice of words ('San Francisco' instead of 'Bay Area') rather than ideas, since If we're only considering San Francisco, the tech dominance starts to fade a little bit.

Also, while we're calling people for misspeaking, Staten Island is New York City.
This submission was the first, but the repeat at
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1575557
already has a comment.
If developers want access to production, they should respond to the call from the helpdesk when production goes down in the middle of the night because of the "simple little tweak" the developer decided to make on the server before leaving for the day.
I'd stress the importance of networking (the other kind): if you're somewhere with any sort of technology community, start attending local (free) events and meeting people in the industry. It's not a matter of going to the events looking for work, but to meet people. The more people you know, the easier it is to get what you want.

Second, an online presence is a good way to get ahead of other candidates. An active GitHub account will go a long way with employers. A blog will too, if you talk about relevant topics.

I'd focus less on specific skills and more on the ways you've demonstrated those skills. If you have worked on free-time projects, throw them up on GitHub and make sure the employer knows about them.

Finally, talk to other students at your school who have had internships. Not only will they be able to advise you, if they think you're a good candidate they can put in a good word for you.
yep. english / portuguese.br
70 slides, and not a single overweight person to be seen.

Just an observation.
I remember Max Levchin mentioning in an interview that Slide would be a success to him if it sells for more than PayPal. I hope he is still happy with this outcome, looking forward to seeing what he will do next.
If the ADA didn't exist, when would they "have to"?

Right after the accessibility group comes through and points out how they are inaccessible, and how many potential users are impacted by that. Accessibility has a lot of internal support, and not mainly for legal reasons.
While I agree with the author's points of keeping things simple and the importance of a good product / functionality underneath the aesthetics.

Plentyoffish was one of the first / earliest online dating site which went free, when all competitors charged a fee. Thus making it the first / earliest in that category.

These days the internet is saturated with free dating services.

I just felt, that the author mistakenly picked a bunch of sites which had an edge (of being in the early web) and therefore aesthetics didn't matter to get a following.

I feel there are plenty of examples of modern sites / services that are new and demonstrate the keeping it simple / clean design perfectly well!

There was also the fact that he says Google's biggest selling point was its simple design. Yes Google's simple design was a breath of fresh air compared to the cluttered yahoo portals of the world. However Google's biggest selling point was that it's search algorithms were undeniably brilliant.

The quality of the searches you got in Google beat any competitor and that's why many (including myself) made the switch!.
Probably the most controversial misfeature is that Starcraft 2 doesn't provide LAN support, ostensibly to combat piracy. If you want officially-supported multi-player, it's Blizzard's Battle.net service or gtfo.
Speculate about the moon landing all you want, but a lot of successful people, Google founders included, credit Montessori education as helpful to their success.
"Flying Santa Behind Schedule" -- oof. Even Santa was hit by the depression! I wonder if it was social engineering for kids to expect late presents (or none)?
We use co-op students for (paid) four month terms. My number one concern when deciding to take an intern is "Am I going to get positive effort out of this exercise"? In other words, will the work the intern does significantly exceed the effort I have to expend training them?

So, the first thing I look for is evidence that they are quick on the uptake, self-motivated and so on. The second is familiarity with our basic computing environment - OS, editors, source control so that they can actually sit down and start doing real work as quickly as possible. You don't want to waste a couple of weeks having them learn to type 'ls' and use emacs.

Since we are a scientific organisation, I am not obsessed with specific language experience as long as the student has good experience with a "similar" language. This is because generally the students don't do "real" software engineering, they usually work in an existing framework, so they don't need advanced language skills.

So by having skills in a wide area, even if they are relatively shallow, you are already increasing your catchment area.

My gut reaction is "learn to use git", but I am not sure I could rationally defend it.
i agree. the 99designs logo just doesn't look right in that position, with that site design. i could imagine that if the site itself were designed differently to match the logo better, it might find a higher level of success.
I'd bet anything with metal would do the trick. So actually, maybe deodorant, as it contains aluminum.
Good idea, it's something I've been meaning to improve.
I started to learn my second foreign language in 7th grade, I started to learn the first in 4th grade.

To this day, I cannot play a musical instrument.
Internet access is so universal now that this doesn't seem like much of an imposition to me. What are the other complaints?
Define 'rich.'
Great question. We've been talking A LOT with companies re: internships and entry level hiring for CollegeJobConnect because, well, that's what our company does! :)

Here are my thoughts:

For undergraduates, employers can't key off of past work experiences because many students simply don't have any (I didn't). If you have done an internship, awesome! Highlight that experience and make sure your description of what you did includes a "so what?" statement (ex. "Built a cool new widget in C++ for Acme Co. (so what?) which improved our client service department's ability to handle critical requests and improve response time" - silly example, but you get the point). All points should explain what you did and why it was important to yourself, to your employer, to the world in general, etc.

If you've worked on projects or have things you can point to online, highlight those too. Again, make sure you explain the importance of what you did and why the employer you are asking to hire you should be impressed (as in "Because of my work on Project X I am now a jQuery ninja and can produce incredible UIs" or "During Project X we won 2000 users and I learned the importance of client support and cost-effective marketing"). Along those same lines, if you have a blog or social media presence, make sure they all tie in together and tell your story well ... and that they display appropriate content :)

Definitely include as many objective metrics as you can: overall GPA, major GPA, SATs, any honors that you received, sports or clubs you participated in, and what your hobbies are.

That's what comes to mind off the top of my head, glad to chat a bit more if you'd like, hit me up at jeff at collegejobconnect.com - good luck!
At several bigcorps where I've worked (>1000 in IT, billions of dollars, lots of regulation) this has been a very big deal and cause of never-ending friction.

1) If the admins don't do at least minimal code reviews then it's meaningless. Developers will find ways to circumvent the inefficiencies in the system.

2) Admins don't do even minimal code reviews.

3) If developers don't have read access to production (code and logs) then admins become the weak link. (Obviously ssl keys and such not included.)

4) If a system is so locked-down as to completely eliminate the possibility of anything going wrong it will also be so locked-down that nothing can be fixed or improved.
People who use Craigslist and eBay are usually looking for cheap deals, and a site that's too slick and colorful probably wouldn't give the same "bargain hunting" feel.
It's easy to tell the public you're invading privacy to prevent terrorism. It's hard to tell the public that terrorists killed people because you respected their privacy.

I'm not saying I agree - in fact I completely disagree - but as a public policy maker and politician, it probably seems illogical to do it any other way. Better to have people blame you for no privacy than blame you for death, right?
Conspicuously missing from the list, Mr. Jobs, Mr. Woz, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin.

Even Larry Ellison is in the list.
$182 Million may sound like a lot, but remember that not too long ago this company was raising capital at a valuation of $2 billion. I expect there will be little cash, if any, left for employees after investor payouts.
Yes. I speak 4 languages with varying degrees of fluency (mostly due to lack of recent use.)
From most fluent to least fluent.
English (I'm American)
Swedish (I lived in Sweden for two years as a missionary)
French (I spent High School in Belgium as an expat)
Spanish (Took 4 years in High School and got pretty darn good at it.)
Finally, talk to other students at your school who have had internships. Not only will they be able to advise you, if they think you're a good candidate they can put in a good word for you. - Great point!
Choose a random cafe in SF, and I bet it will not be filled with hacker-types. Choose a random person in SF to talk to, and I bet they will not care about startups either. It's all about who your friends are and where you hang out.

Did the OP actually try going to any NYC hacker meetups? Did he go to any NYC hacker spaces? When he was at parties, did he even mention his interest in startups, or did he himself perpetuate the myths he describes?
Don't know about Google. I'm working for a defense contractor, so we may have more hoops and red tape to blunder through... but my PMs are always busy talking to the customer, writing documentation, figuring out what the specs actually mean, managing, or something. There's no time left in the day to hunker down with the code (or digital logic or whatever engineering discipline the PM came from).

See also "Maker's Schedule Manager's Schedule":
http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the point of the blog post, was it not?
That's been my experience. Google's ads (in search and Gmail) have been consistently better-targeted to me than Facebook's ads. The only ads I get on Facebook are dating ads (and insulting ones at that).

Full Disclosure: I'm not running an ad-blocker, but I am running a hosts file, so I still see Google and Facebook ads, but maybe not "all of them".
No, it wouldn't bother me. In fact, it might motivate me to put on some muscle and get a little more fit.
I'm just curious; how can you recommend it to family/friends looking for a computer, since currently you still need an extra machine to sync the iPad to? Is it that they have a desktop and wanted a laptop?
Why people still use BlackBerrys
Like it a lot... dislike braindead simps trying to make jokes about it which they read online.
I like it, though for as much as I use it, I can't seem to fall in love with it like I did the iPhone.

I use it principally for:

-Reading. iBooks is awesome. I love how it syncs your place so you can pick up on the phone. I haven't used the Kindle app much (which does the same) because most of the books I read are old and freely available in epub or PDF. I also use, to a lesser degree, Instapaper and Reeder. I used to use Stanza but the lack of sync is a deal breaker. Sad really because it's such a nice app.

-Playing Music. I use it as a banjo tuner with OmniTuner (an iPhone app) and I also use TabToolkit and GuitarTookit as well as PDF's with written music and tab. It's more convenient than lugging around books or loose leaf paper.

-Listening to Music. The speakers are good enough to make moving it around from room to room and using it for background music nice.

-Occasional Browsing. I really don't like browsing on it and it feels like the only browsing I do on there is wasting time. I get the nagging feeling that I should just be reading a book, or doing something off-screen altogether, rather than browsing. The tabs are clunky, the browser is slim on features and typing is too slow.

-Mindmaps, Mockups. I don't think it's the ideal tool (yet) for either of those activities, but I sometimes do both if I don't have the laptop handy. iMockups is pretty nice. I'd put OmniFocus on there if I hadn't already spent so much on it for my Mac and iPhone. I'm not dropping another $40 for it.

-Etc., Games, Email, Evernote, Netflix, YouTube. I play Carcassone and Settlers. I use Flashcard apps to try to teach my baby to read. I respond to emails and write notes in Evernote. I'm not a big fan of typing on the iPad (I prefer the iPhone keyboard) so I use it for email less than I expected, but still, it's nice to have it there. I thought I'd use it for video all the time, and the times I do, it's wonderful. I'd guess I watch a movie on it twice or three times a month.

Overall, I'm glad I have it, I'd probably miss it a lot if it was gone and, as you can see from the list above, I've integrated it many areas of my life. Strangely though, I don't have a strong emotional attachment to it. I don't get excited to defend it and I don't sell it to friends/family. With the iPhone I couldn't wait to recommend it to everyone I know.
Utilities for Saving and Sharing Code Snippets
"Maybe I can find a product / hacker / designer who can run it with me" - This seems like an excellent idea.. you've obviously got a lot invested in the site, and ideas about where it ought to go.
You pretty much need an experienced HR person to deal with this kind of thing - if your startup is, well, a startup, I am guessing they won't have anybody with the knowledge (or interest) to do the paperwork.

I imagine there might be an exception if you were actively headhunted and the company wanted to hire a lawyer to deal with it.
Wow, those are some inspiring living spaces.
Don't get your hopes up; it seems that it's been on their list for a year and a half, and it's been on top for months now:

http://getsatisfaction.com/culturedcode/topics/sync_mac_thin...
I haven't read Breakfast of Champions yet, but it's on my list. The Sirens of Titan is also a good one.
How To Discover Your Productivity Patterns
"If Slide cashes out for $1.5 billion, Levchin 'would regard it as abject failure'," Slide investor David Weiden of Khosla Ventures told BusinessWeek in 2007.

source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/if-slide-cashes-out-for-15-bi...

edit: note that PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion.