skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, the CS education is available without the late fees, computer science is probably the easiest subject to learn from the internet.

For one thing, NYU trades on their name as well as their education, that's a big chunk of the money you're talking about.

But the more poignant question to me is whether you're getting less out of the liberal arts classes than you are out of the CS classes. I'm not sure that's clear, you can learn engineering anywhere, but 80% of the people I've ever worked with can't write for crap.
Just presented today.. and as a hacker/ entrepreneur.. the great thing about Dreamit is they do focus on the business. Its easy for all of us hackers to put out products but how do we get users, and turn that product into a real business.. and this is what the DreamIt program really helps with. Learned a lot, and was a great summer. The Philly tech/startup community is incredible. I highly recommend anyone to apply.
Thanks. Will check it out.
RapLeaf offers a service where you give it an email address and it returns the Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts associated with it.

Now, I'm not saying they are using this vector, but then they must be using something like this because how else could they offer the service. (This also means there might be other vectors to achieve this end result).

To me, this also makes me pleased that I use a unique email address against my email domain for each site I use.
> But then if you believe that and therefore you believe in net neutrality for wireless

The spectrum bid was about openness, not net neutrality. The four openness conditions of this were: open applications, open devices, open services, and open networks.

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/07/our-commitmen...
Here, use our mobile OS. We're all about open.

Ahoy, our mobile OS is outselling others? Look over there, stuff with wires is still open.
It's not you, it's me: Microsoft kills IronRuby
That's not how it works.

My brother had a credit card number stolen 3 times, so he cancelled the card. BANG! 750 to 690.

So he said, well, if I reopen the card, will that fix things?

"Oh, god, don't do that! That'll be an even bigger hit!"
You misunderstand. If the rules are changed so that fewer people will have to repay, then people will take advantage of that -- and fewer loans will be repayed. This means that the banks lose money. For them to stay in business (or at least to be able to maintain their capitalization -- investors will flee if they can't make profits), they've got to pass those default costs on to the customers. Thus, all of us will pay a higher interest rate to make up the shortfall.
Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability
Bring it on. I hate phones.

I make very few phone calls, and if only my crazy-ass plan wouldn't charge me for SMS when the phone calls are free, I'd make even fewer.
Congrats you guys! Good to hear the app is gaining some solid traction.
The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants
An interesting idea for commission-based sales incentives?
I got as far as

The pursuit of profit is a common theme in all of the documentaries I have listed, which is what ultimately led to the predicament we are in today.

That tells me that the author doesn't have the slightest understanding of economics. That being the case, there's no sense reading about his economic predictions.

UPDATE: I think I overstated that. What I really should say is...

The author appears to be of the class that believes that if something is done profitably, it must necessarily be bad. While it's true that many evil things are driven by greed, it's equally true that a pursuit of profits leads one to provide the goods and services that society values the most. Since the opening of the article seems to ignore the latter aspect, I don't expect that any economic analysis it might engage in will have any depth.
Yes in fact it cost more in equipment, facilities, salaries of professors to educate an engineering student compared to a mathematics student or English student.
heymatty, thanks for the suggestions. We are actually thinking of porting over to Java to support Mac and Linux. Delete/edit should be simple. We'll look into SSL.

May I ask why you need the option to turn off screenshots? We considered this initially, but logic was that screenshot updates was the point of our software and weren't sure why anyone would use our service to turn off screenshots. Thanks
You need to do two important things:

- Have projects you can list on your resume. There's no rule that says only jobs can be listed on a resume!

- Have someone who works at the company submit your resume directly to the hiring manager or internal HR system. This is especially important for big companies, since they have armies of HR people who are completely non-technical but just scan the incoming flood of resumes based on simple filtering criteria like having a degree and the having the right buzzwords listed.

Also, apply to many jobs. Don't just spam listings where you clearly are unqualified, but just don't put your eggs all in one or a few baskets. You can also apply for jobs that don't exist if you think you have a skillset that fits a particular company and/or have an interest in their product.

FWIW, I quit college during my sophomore year and got several programming job offers using the above strategy.
Leslie Lamport: How to Write a Proof [1993]
But as the parent stated later in his post, not only do college graduates earn more money, but the unemployment rate of college graduates is also far below the average unemployment rate.

In fact, it looks like the unemployment rate for college-educated workers is falling:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/07/28/high-unempl...
"In any voluntary transaction, both parties will improve their situation -- else they would not have entered into the transaction voluntarily."

Ah, the idealist argument. "Fred is doing it, so it must be good for Fred." I proses that instead: In any voluntary transaction, both parties BELIEVE they will improve their situation -- else they would not have entered into the transaction voluntarily.

In the case where the parties to a transaction are organizations of individuals, the circumstances are murkier still: In any voluntary transaction conducted by individuals on behalf of a group, both individuals believe they will improve their personal situation -- else they would not have entered their group into the transaction voluntarily.

This is why you have HP's CEO voluntarily defrauding HP. I doubt you'd argue that HP entered into a transaction with his mistress because both HP and the mistress improved their situation?
Except it was just as "broken" under Bush (debt and deficit spending) but the Repubs didn't care then. Now that we have a Dem president they suddenly care. Lately they appear to have a coordinated Message about how we can't afford to spend anymore -- but only on things they don't like such as health care or unemployment, whereas military spending and Iraq and Afghanistan or tax cuts for the rich are just peachy keen aokay.
Note that the paper's title is somewhat misleading: it's not a newbie's guide to how mathematicians write proofs, but a proposal for a new method of writing proofs that he thinks mathematicians and computer scientists should use. An interesting proposal, though.
China would be far more more of a threat if we weren't cheerfully trading with them

It's not just 'shipping billions of dollars'. It's getting tangible things in return. In fact, we're hardly 'shipping' them anything. We mail them slips of paper -- or even more commonly and abstractly, we move some symbols around in a ledger -- and then they're really shipping us real stuff. Who's winning that trade?
Online Petitions are a Sham
The Starbucks Principle: Just because something seems stupid and wrong, like opening four Starbucks outlets on the same intersection, that doesn't mean the market will punish it.

Some people are deeply offended by the fact that America's unique position in the world economy allows it to run an incredible deficit without being punished by the market. The bond vigilantes are just a bogeyman invoked to preserve the illusion of a just world. The reality is that heavily-indebted examples like Japan suggest that the US can probably be mismanaged for decades before real consequences kick in.
This is Jessica from inDinero. We didn't run out of funds. All in all a great article.
I just signed up, and now don't know what I'm meant to do. You need some call to actions in there.
perhaps we should allow downvoting on submissions as well as comments.
It's really no big deal, but in Australia as kids we're taught we live on a continent that is an island and a country :)
So no printing (let the market correct itself) or printing (let the government siphon off taxpayer money to rich, pretend it's for the good of people)
It's a shame that there aren't more half-courses. Running both a course on filters and "a tiny course on the stuff about filters you need to you for other courses" (that could maybe be as little as a few optional classes + a test) shouldn't be beyond our organizational skills.

Maybe what I want is more tests as pre-requisites rather than only full fledged courses (my alma mater had an English test that could be taken in lieu of one mandatory course)
Good point, I forgot about the gap in Javascript performance.

We're currently in an arms race of Javascript interpreters, though, and there's nothing stopping Apple or Palm from using Android's interpreter in the next release.
Excerpt from the article:

For the first time ever, scientists have created an invisibility cloak made from silk, and coated in gold.

The new metamaterial, as invisibility cloaks and their kin are technically called, only works on relatively long terahertz waves (a region of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio and infrared light)[...]

In other words, they haven't "created an invisibility cloak". They have discovered some interesting properties of a new material based on silk.
"Degrees clearly are great revenue producing machines for the portion of the workforce currently unemployed with degrees."

The unemployment rate for degree-holders in the US is currently 4.5%, compared to 10.5% overall. The bulk of the unemployed are in blue-collar sectors and among those who have graduated with a high school diploma or less. We can argue about what is or isn't an "acceptable rate" of unemployment, but typically for America it's been 4-5% unemployment. That even in this Great Recession, degree-holding citizen unemployment sits within the "acceptable" range, tells you that there is tons of value to getting better educated in this country at this time, and even in this climate.
Do you take into account the years that someone without a degree work?
Federal workers earning 2X their private counterparts
"Maybe they should make it so that degree can be legally reposessed by the bank ... and any future employer, seeing lack of degree would know to inquire about the details."

This wouldn't work. They can't repossess the knowledge in your head, or the fact that you did EARN a degree, even if you don't HAVE one. Employers are mainly interested in what people know and can do, not how their finances have been in the past (though that may come into play for questions of trust).
It might not be as bad as the housing market crash but keep in mind that more people will be going to college in the future and take out student loans. I think higher education loans will grow at a staggering rate which will ultimately crash. If it crashed on its own, it wouldn't be devastating. If it happened right after the housing market crash, it could destroy our economy.
Toronto HN Meetup - Aug 23 at The Rhino
The second Toronto HN Meetup time and place have been chosen (see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1579262). We're all going to head over to the Rhino.

I've created a Guestlist page for hit here: http://guestlistapp.com/manage/events/27732 and if you want to keep on top of the details over twitter feel free to follow http://twitter.com/torontoHN

Can't wait to see you guys there!
"Frankly, I have yet to find a Java library I'd actually want to use."

HyperGraphDB, and the Google App Engine jars, for starters.
But that ends up sending an email to the account you extend the sharing request to. It might raise a red flag to some people.

This 'vulnerability' doesn't contact the victim, so it can be done in combination with, like the report said, a phishing scheme to gain the real names of the users of an email list.

I'm not saying that this is some massive privacy issue. It opens up a vector to make other attacks, specifically email based attacks, seem more legitimate, which is a bad thing.
Tests as pre-reqs are pretty useless IMHO. I 'tested into' the second level of calculus before I had taken pre-calc, but I would not have been able to pass the class, not a chance.
C++0x (upcoming C++ standard, includes lambda functions)
Hi rjett -

No worries, we don't view this as belittling. I actually bootstrapped the company for a year, did the go into debt thing, give up possessions etc. before my cofounder Andrey joined up.

We also closed our first revenue deal at 600 users, pre YCombinator.

We discussed the benefits of YC in great detail before applying, and again before accepting the invite. In between, I met with 10 of the YC alum founders to learn what value they extracted from/redistributed into the program.

We went through a similar values clarification session before we accepted angel/seed money. The funding we've taken to date is convertible debt and will allow us to grow at a faster rate than a smaller, bootstrapped, 2 person 'lifestyle' business.

Pre TC launch, we were growing at a steady rate month/month with no effort/cost to acquire users, but we decided we'd like to catalyze the company with the adrenaline shot you mention.

As you said, the network effect is very challenging to generate with bootstrapped resources. When we saw the opportunity to grow at a faster rate, we went for it, and it's been a great ride so far.
Here's a link that might interest you then. Real-time Node.js Asteroids, written in CoffeeScript.

Lazeroids.com: http://lazeroids.com/

Here's the source:

http://github.com/gerad/lazeroids-node/blob/master/views/app...
I can't see infrared or uv but that doesn't mean I don't understand the concept. to get waay off topic.
Animals In Front Of A Glass
They are so funny when you put them in front of a glass.
Poparazzi | Social Media Coercion
The type of pressure universities will get from the government will only be the kind of pressure that is politically expedient. We have enough affirmative action university system as it is.
Recreating a Classic Video Game With Radio-Controlled Cars
Plenty of loan words and easier to pronounce.
New find pushes age of stone tools back 1M years (to 3.4M)
Here's a set of videos on YouTube with Monderman on site in Drachten explaining what's been done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo3KWHqmDhA&feature=relat...
> We think it's in your interest as a customer to provide us relevant
> behavioral information.

No, thanks. My current banks (+PayPal/CC) already know too much about me. Also, I wouldn't like to be patronized by a one-size-fits-all algorithm.
When Web Photos Reveal More Than You Intend
It makes me think the website is Columbian, and looks like a typo, not .com, .co.uk but .co. Not sure how the average person would cope! Nice for making domain hacks though like bron.co or fias.co.
For one thing, NYU trades on their name as well as their education,...

If college is just an exercise in signalling, why bother with classes at all?

Why not just replace classes with final exams, give out the paper, host a few networking events and save billions of dollars?
Can you provide more info about McAfee's warning?
Keep in mind that the entrepreneur is writing about his experience of raising the round... on his investor's blog.

I love the guys at True Ventures; they support some great entrepreneurs and some great companies.

But it is also fair to say it's hardly a neutral and unbiased platform from which to communicate all lessons learned from this endeavor.

I think it's a shame the Puppet Labs didn't write this on their own blog, perhaps even personal blog, where a more unbiased and neutral point of view might be given.
We just registered a .CO as the main address for our new startup. We think of it somewhat as a placeholder, as we hope to one day purchase the .COM since it's not actively in use by its current owner (but we haven't tried to contact yet). When we started, we had always called the product Rugby, but since the .COM is owned by Polo Ralph Lauren, Rugby.com would never be an option.

I think that had the .COM for our startup been taken by a pre-existing company with deep pockets and a strong brand, we would have simply chosen a different name. Incidentally, Rugby.co was already registered, and by a COLOMBIAN of all people. :)

We've all heard of sites that started with less-than-ideal domain names and upgraded when they had the money, and we rarely hear any of them complain about how much they spent.
Thanks jaybol.

Actually I'm pretty sure PG hates me (jk). As a female, non-tech biz/dev founder, I don't fit the typical YC mold.

Andrey (my cofounder) is the amazing developer behind the entire product, and before we accepted YC money we bootstrapped the company for 6 months. I'd bootstrapped the company as an LLC for a year before that.

As our rate of growth started to accelerate, and we had more opportunities for revenue-generating deals (phenomenal as a 2 person team) we saw YC as the perfect opportunity to expand more quickly.

Could we do Contagion successfully as a bootstrapped firm? Sure. But we were also in a unique position to go after a larger opportunity.

We analyzed the 37signals approach, weighed the risks, benefits, and resources at hand, and decided to go with YC, a TechCrunch launch, and raising a seed round.

As for those ice cream related pounds, Andrey and I would be happy to help you move them off :).
Sorry if I'm not constructive. But you ignored my actual point, regarding that fact that he can in fact take his business elsewhere. If no country exists that conforms to his expectations, perhaps he should revise his expectations or design his own country.

The GP poster is advocating eliminating taxation period, because it's based on force, if I'm understanding things correctly here. How can someone respond constructively to that?

Guess you're right, I'll stop wasting time engaging.
Two links for you:

http://thefounderconference.com is next week and you may still be able to pitch your co-founder position there.

Otherwise, http://www.meetup.com/Co-Founders-Wanted-Meetup/ runs every other month.

Where are you located?
This would be a great thing to do with semantic technology.
Ask HN: What is an alternative to Google? Really.
Seriously, I am inclined to stop using Gooogle just because of their "Net neutrality" posture. I want to find alternatives, I know about Bing, Yahoo, but want to find out what people are using besides Goooogle
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-green/breaking-google-goes-evil_b_676021.html
Having seen first hand the pathetic joke that is Inc's journalistic ability (and integrity), I doubt every word in that article.

They're just slightly above 419 scammers.
This is why you have HP's CEO voluntarily defrauding HP.

Your example is fatally flawed. The transactions I assume you're referring to -- the misrepresented dining expenses -- are transactions between HP and the restaurant, with Hurd acting as HP's agent. Since Hurd acted fraudulently, it was -- by definition -- not a voluntary transaction. Fraud is the commission of force, and thus cannot be voluntary.

both parties BELIEVE they will improve their situation

Of course. And that's the best that we can do. I'd urge you to read Human Action, by Mises, where this problem is addressed quite completely.

The thing is, only the participants themselves can truly know what their goals are, so there is no one in a position to gainsay. Indeed, sometimes the real motivation isn't even known to the individual himself. The best that we can do is to assume that each person is acting in his own self interest.

The only alternative is to have some sort of Big Brother vetting every transaction, but there's no reason to believe that BB would do any better, and there's every reason to believe that it would be far worse.
Why small-scale bike sharing won’t work: Felix Salmon
I'm going to take a leap here, but I'm pretty sure that -- on the internet -- hacker/blogger/programmer/designers are not a 'niche'. There are numerous communities for all of these people. Instead you should focus on groups of people who have a hard time connecting. There are plenty of communities that have no real internet equivalent. A small list of actual niches:

- UrbEx (Urban Exploration)
- Board Game Enthusiasts
- Cooking (This could be a big one. Food blogs are really popular, but disconnected.)

There are a lot of people out there, and if you can focus on long-term user acquisition (which rules out the 'try every new thing and then drop it a month later' tech crowd), you'll be a lot happier.
This was definitely a feature that I thought about implementing before publicizing the app. It seems that I should get this done ASAP.
Hey fookyong -

We actually had some 'major-blog news-worthy' coverage pre YCombinator, pre TechCrunch, and pre name change, while we were bootstrapped.

Here's a piece in the Huffington Post by Esther Dyson (5 months BEFORE she invested in us): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther-dyson/health-not-health...

The first, prototypical YC TechCrunch launch article doesn't always tell the whole story behind a company's history and founding (in our case there wouldn't be room ;).
You're right. There's no causation there... but that doesn't mean it still doesn't affect me.
Hopefully this invalidates some patents.
>being able to write both client and server code in the same language has a lot of advantages.

Instead of html + css + sql + js + (python, ruby, [FotM]) its just html + css + sql + js? I would not be surprised to see html + css + sql + js (dom manipulation) + js (server side). The only benefit I see is that one could re-use their input validation.

Are there any examples of this in the wild? I have heard many claim that using JS on both sides is a big win, but have yet to come across anyone actually doing it (genuine question, it is something I would like to take notes from).
Look into the RExcel plugin for Excel. There are other ways to get data between the two programs, but they usually involve importing and exporting CSV files. With RExcel, it's only slightly more complicated than copying and pasting.
Thanks for the links.

I'm in Chicago, which makes it hard to attend SV events.
It is just as hard anywhere you go. I moved to Silicon Valley 3 years ago with no college degree (I was still in school) and it took me 1 and 1/2 years to find a job.

Obviously being here helps but it is just as hard anywhere you go. Going to college is going to be your best option.

Moving to a major city won't hurt either.
Fair enough. I'll explain why I find this article important.

The current crisis is not cyclical, it's man-made:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796

Some have seen it coming, ie it could be averted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Countries have been breaking the basic economic law - income >= spendings - for a long time.
There are several ways to get rid of the debt, eg inflation or nationalization. All of them are unethical and are basically stealing from all but a select few at the top.
That's what this article is about.

If things come as far as the author writes, it will affect all of us here at Hacker News. There is a lot of people here trying to create something, to enrich the others and thus to get rich. It will all be in vain if our governments decide it's time to rob us.

I could have been less emotional and more specific about this. Thank you for challenging me.