skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am exactly the opposite. I can (and often do) listen to Chopin all day. Bach sounds like weird robot music to me.

However, Bach is fun to play, whereas Chopin is too hard...
What relevant skills did they lack, specifically? Was it just the particular programming language you use, knowledge of how to design and architect systems, development methodology, algorithms...?
This is exactly the question... would I have a chance to get a funding opportunity?
Treat them as empty, read only directories?
DO NOT READ THE DRAGON BOOK.

It's not a very good introduction to compilers. Read Engineering a Compiler by Cooper and Torczon. The Appel book is also very good, and contains some stuff about functional and logic languages that are generally missing from most compiler texts. If you're an enthusiast, but not in it to build a compiler, I really enjoy Programming Language Pragmatics. For more advanced material, use the Muchnick book, or the Compiler Design Handbook (both editions have different materials). They also provide excellent pointers to literature, but aren't great for beginners.

I get the impression that most people who recommend the Dragon book haven't read it. When I was doing my PhD I had five or six books on my shelf, and was constantly unimpressed with the Dragon Book, but always impressed with Cooper/Torczon, Muchnick and Appel.
Cheezburger CEO's Tweet Gets a Response From Reddit's Co-Founder
Okay sure, but how do you get from the introductory docs (which are far and wide, as well as lacking in quite a few areas) to reference documentation. I can see how ruby-doc can be a good resource but only for those that know the language and know what they should be looking for, even then though sometimes docs like python's are better references.
"It can commonly be better for a person 18 just to join McDonald's, work hard, learn the business really well, work up to a manager of one McDonald's, manage also a second McDonald's for the same owner, and then have a heart to heart with a local banker about buying and running their own McDonald's. Build up to 10 McDonald's, run them WELL, and will have a better job than nearly anyone in a company a programmer might work for."

Is this easier or harder than founding a successful software business?
Meh. It's SSA treatment is poor. The dataflow chapter is OK. The points-to chapter isn't great (especially for someone so into it). BDDs and datalog are very poorly addressed, especially when trying to seek more information of Lam/Whaley's work on them.

Skip the whole Dragon Book, read Cooper/Torczon or Appel.
Yep, you're right, and I could have chosen a better example =). Globalization is usually referred to as 国际化, "international" + suffix to mean "evolving to something"; ie - becoming international.

So yes, this is one of the ways whereby when Chinese is succinct, it's really succinct, hence loved by many of the older generation. But since Chinese doesn't share the recursive and context-free grammatical structure of English, and because tense isn't explicit, you lose some flexibility.

Eg: Instant Messaging can be shortened to IM, and can be turned into a transitive form but adding 'ing' to form IMing.

And of course, I'm confident that a language affects the way you think, as well as the memes that can be passed around. Best example, the word LOLcat and the associated lulz could never have evolved in the Chinese language.

Something else could have evolved perhaps, but different things for sure, with a different focus.

Should probably also bring up the fact that acronyms are near impossible in Chinese, at least in it's strict sense. I like Japanese for the fact that both the language and the culture is willing to evolve.

Or put slightly differently, Chinese is kinda like Java. Japanese is more Clojure-ish, with the ability to abandon formal declarations (arigato + many trailing speech placeholders) yet retain the good parts of its core.
First, as someone who is not originally an American, it is tough to get into America legally regardless of your religion or country of origin.

The USCIS, formerly called the BSCIS, formally called the INS is tough to go through for everyone. You need to understand that this is not becuase of your religion or whatever - its becuase you are not American like the rest of the world (be it Irish, French, SOuth African, Egyptian etc...)

They are equally unhelpful and incompetent to people of all nations.
How large consumer companies (such as Amazon) deal with Credit Card fraud
Well, couldn't you find Egyptian investors to fund you?
All about GNU Screen
I'm not understanding why romaji is more efficient. You'll still have to learn the romanji... and in the end it imparts less specific information.
In my opinion on the landing page you should have two sentences saying what the app does - what problem it solves. Your registration form is short so keep that in a box to the right - login can go in a popup or on another page though right? Screenshots are good if it's obvious what is happening. The UI isn't loading properly for me at the moment but it looks fairly small and complex. I couldn't tell what was going on anyway.
... it's kind of impossible for a young Arab Muslim to travel to America (This is the truth regardless what you hear in your American media)

Nonsense. I personally live in an area with a large immigrant Muslim population, both from the Middle East and from Africa. (This is the truth regardless of what you hear in your Egyptian media.)
> Not quite sure I'm interpreting you correctly here - but woudln't you be using localhost for this and/or using loopback interfaces?

Sure. But you still have to assign a port number. And you still have to make a round trip through the network stack. It's also a potential security hole if you're not careful to configure the server apps to only listen on the loopback interface.

> Also - if you were designing an application that had to scale out to that many cores, you'd be dealing with things at a system level and using sockets anyway.

Why? Running N servers on N machines is completely straightforward. Why should it not be just as straightforward to run N servers on one machine with N cores?

> you still have to track and configure everything - and that can still be automated

Of course it can be automated, but automating the assignment of virtual servers to TCP/IP ports is not straightforward. You have to coordinate the port assignment on both the client and the server side. You have potential synchronization issues if one virtual server goes down and another comes up and wants to use the same port as the one that went down. Port numbers are a scarce resource. The file system namespace is essentially infinite. Why make things harder than they need to be?
Sorry for making a comment off-topic..but you are wrong! Just for your information, all Europeans can enter U.S. without a visa, through the visa waiver program... which is not available option for Arab Muslims.

I am talking about entering America, regardless the purpose of travel!
I don't want to continue commenting off-topic, but I am former Stanford student, and although that.. I could not enter America! And I am talking based on applying for U.S. visa, which is a formal information (they release the stats for visa applicants).
Generally speaking I don't advocate labeling people. My remark was included because many people in the OP's situation would feel terrible about asking money to a company that is struggling. However, it's important to remember that they are the ones at fault so a request is absolutely legitimate and he shouldn't feel bad about it.
Well, they owe you SOMETHING, either cash or if they don't have it, equity. Demand what is yours.

First off, you have a right to know the state of the company's finances. If they say they don't have the money, tell them to prove it and show you their bank account balance.

Second, you can be aggressive without getting personal, as long as everyone stays honest. If they're lying to you, then they're douchebags and it is personal.

Third, another way you could do this is to setup a formal loan and repayment plan with set interest rates, payment schedule and penalties. You could probably do this yourself.

Setting up a formal, high interest-bearing loan seems like a great way to incentivize them to pay your money back. If they don't want to play ball, then take them to court.

However, I definitely agree that the solution is NOT to bend over and take it in the ass.
The ruby stdlib seems to follow a different documentation format then everything else ruby. Look to http://www.ruby-doc.org/core for what is the standard documentation format (not that I like it much better).
loool... this is something uncommon here in Egypt. :)
In fact, internet usage stills low yet.
More on the war against photography
"But you wanted to be part of a startup with all the associated glory and rewards. That means you also assumed some risk..."

I disagree with that. This person is an employee not a founder. Therefore the risk they assume should be different. At worst, it should be that of losing their job at short notice. The flexibility you also refer to should not extend to working for long periods with no idea when you'll get paid.

Although we can only hear one side of the story here, I feel the founders were negligent in their duties to their employees. They should have made the company's situation clearer to the staff and gone over the options.

Like others in the thread, I doubt the OP will get all the money he is rightfully owed. However, simply walking away in 'good faith' seems weak (esp when that faith has already been abused).
Developing Your Business By Marketing Your API
clickable: http://www.jotOnce.com
Honestly buddy, keep your stats. I have neighbors. It's difficult for anyone who's not from a rich country to immigrate here, not just Muslims. It's difficult for Indians, Latin Americans, Africans, everyone.

edit: By the way, if you didn't want all this off-topic discussion, you shouldn't have said what you did in the post. You should have asked your question with just the relevant information.
It's not just the example. Your entire point is ehrm, incorrect. Chinese uses radicals and entire characters to serve as the prefix/suffix. It's perfectly capable of performing character mashups or other mutations to create slang, and there are spontaneous word generations all the time... I mean how else could new ideas be expressed?

>Should probably also bring up the fact that acronyms are near impossible in Chinese, at least in it's strict sense. I like Japanese for the fact that both the language and the culture is willing to evolve.

Lol wut. There is some interesting bias and stereotyping going on here, but I find this so novel and shocking that I'm unable to respond.
Ask HN: Article from a while back?
It was on this site a while back but I'm having trouble finding it. It was about Ford lending someone shares but bought them back, forcing the borrower to pay any price they demanded to give Ford their shares back. Something like that...

Help?
It seems your server got trampled by HN.
Vacation, sure, but for a work visa it's quite tough!
As others have said, it depends on how you define success. My first attempt at a business was/is selling a software application in a freemium model. I made $400 the first month, $1800 the next, and it's gone up and down since then. I don't make enough to quit my full-time job, but enough to pay down my mortgage and save up some capital for my next business that I'm working on getting off the ground.
Yep. Bringing the rig back up now. It's been trampled before but never gone down. This must be a big boost.
I got internal server error when trying to view a jot. Also when creating a jot I had to click "choose passphrase", it didn't create one by default (box was empty).
I am not talking about immigration... I am talking about entering America.
All Arab Muslims who apply for U.S. visa, fill a specific forms which created for Muslim Arabs from age 18 to 45 yrs.

You did not apply for a U.S. visa, so of course you have no idea about it. :)
I am talking about entering America, regardless the purpose!
It's kind of impossible for a young Arab Muslim to enter America.. or obtain any kind of U.S. visa (tourism, business, study)
Back up. Will keep the balancing act going.
Ask HN: Review my Startup - jotOnce.com
Hey HN please review my new micro startup. We basically made this site as a way to make it easier to send information to a person or a group of people without having to give out your personal information. So any comments or suggestions would be great. Thanks
How do you plan on starting a company here if you cannot live here permanently?
I think success is what you define it. At the moment - my own definition for my start up is enough earnings for me not to rely on getting another job on the side.
Couldn't agree more, I hack on compilers a fair bit (one of my own, plus the JITs in PyPy and Unladen Swallow) and the Dragon Book was impossible for me to get anything out of.
For one thing, mod_whatever may not exist for whatever hot new language you want to use. ZeroMQ already has bindings for most languages people might want to use (including weird ones) and there are only like 16 C functions plus some constant declarations, so bindings are easy to make. And once you have ZeroMQ support, Mongrel2 can talk to you. That may not be a killer feature for you, but it's really nice.

Plus, everything in the design of Mongrel2 just seems to make sense. I'm not sure how to describe it; Mongrel2 smells good.
The name I've always seen given to this is the waterbed theory of complexity. There's a certain amount of necessary complexity in a problem, and pushing it down in one place just increases the complexity necessary somewhere else. The only way to reduce the necessary complexity involved is to solve a simpler problem instead. Note that this does not exclude the possibility of unnecessary complexity, which is also possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterbed_theory
Ask HN: source control for windows?
Any recommendations on source control system for an all windows environment? I looked at git for windows but it sounds like it is not as well supported due to lack of resources and I would really prefer to get a system I can trust and not have to worry about.

[Edit] I am looking primarily for personal work.
Looks like overpopulation is far from being a problem...
There isn't much price difference between kindle and nook. From what I've read so far

1. cost is almost the same

2. nook can play video, is touch screen, runs on android while kindle doesn't

3. kindle is faster than nook

4. kindle keyboard is ugly (I actually saw my colleague using it, it does look ugly, but it was previous gen kindle, may be the new one is better)

5. nook can expand upto 16 GB, kindle is fixed at 2 GB

6. kindle doesn't read epub, while nook does

7. Amazon seems to have more books than nook

may be it isn't worth spending too much time thinking about it (its not very expensive, like say iPad that one will regret picking the wrong hardware).
Down again. Just paste it into a comment :P
Sampling bias.

Try normal Google Maps, zoom out to see the whole world. Drag yellow StreetView dude, you will see blue overlay showing StreetView coverage (ignore isolated dots, these are Panoramio photos).

You will see that South Africa is the only place in Africa with coverage.
Ask HN: Requiring FB Connect, Will This Kill My Startup?
I'm curious what other people's experience has been using FB Connect as a sign-in option for their web apps, especially those that use it exclusively.

It seems that many people, even "tech aware" younger users, don't understand FB Connect and may be suspicious of it. This makes me worry about all the majority of potential users, who on average will understand it much less.

Any idea what % of potential users will automatically refuse to use a service if it requires them to login with FB Connect?

I ask because the startup I'm launching soon will require users to login using their Facebook ID. I'm not worried about internet users that don't have FB, because they're not likely to want to use our site anyways (its a video chat application).

Also, many sites allow you to login with your FB ID, Twitter handle, Google account, or to create your own account. For my startup, there are specific reasons why offering multiple forms of login won't work, so we've opted to use FB.

Cheers.
Right...it's like a sympathetic vibration ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_vibration )...but on an emotional level. I guess I'm "tuned" to Bach and you're tuned to Chopin.

If anybody is interested, I've found this to be a very pleasurable way to listen to music http://www.youtube.com/user/smalin

Here's some Chopin http://www.youtube.com/user/smalin#p/u/7/Tj1hDqf8Pm0

And also here's a paper on Aesthetic Chills if anybody is wondering...
http://www.springerlink.com/content/w50652r575n16342/
Thanks. I shall :) Never had it be this clunky before either.
Where I think you err is in stating that music doesn't give us "new insights into the world we live in". It is precisely because music is emotion/physiological/psychological that it gives us a great deal of insights into not only individual human beings, but the movements and ideas of entire societies.

Stravinsky, who's "Poetics of Music"[1] is one of the more brilliant treatises on the importance of "high" music, once famously stated the "music doesn't have the power to express anything at all"-- his entire belief is that music is a reflection of the people and societies in which it develops. He above all placed music in a higher realm because of what it uniquely taught about people

The belief that there is an objectivity to judging music isn't a popular one, but it is one that I believe to be rather self-evident. Certainly the depth of emotional response to the opening of Beethoven's 9th Symphony[2] should be dramatically different from the response to the latest Britney Spears single. Certainly Bob Dylan's music teaches us something far more complex and valuable about the culture in which it arose than does a jingle from a car commercial.

Indeed, looking through the major musical time periods, it is clear that the representative "geniuses" of each are are elevated as such precisely because their music teaches us something about that time period. Bach's music is unerringly rational, but always highly ornamented. His greatest works are often religious, and reflect the emerging force of Protestantism. Mozart's contrast greatly, with emphasis on balance and elegance, and are often more "absolute" (and thus "secular", although this distinction is somewhat artificial). Etc. Etc.

Simply contrast two symphonies: Beethoven 3[3] with Copland 3[4]. I think you'd be hard-pressed to make the argument that the boisterous triumphalism of the former doesn't crystalize the specific emotions, cultural trends, and overall ideas of the Napoleonic era, or that the latter could have emerged from any culture other than that of individualist America.

And this is just scratching the surface. I haven't even mentioned the dedecophonic serialism of Schoenberg and its clear roots in the modernist era, and I skipped completely the Romantic era from which Chopin, the original topic of discussion, sprung.

All of which to say, is: I think you are short-changing one of the single most powerful elements of human culture, and in doing so, genuinely short-changing yourself out of both greater pleasure and understanding.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Poetics-Music-Lessons-Harvard-paperbac...
[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg5vABFHgpU
[3]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XL2ha18i5w
[4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGVvsh8BKO8 (Not the best performance, but largely competent)
The Dragon Book is quite readable. The best approach is to read each chapter by itself rather than going from beginning to end. If there's a topic interested you, jump to that chapter. You can jump to the regular expression chapter, which can be read by itself, jump to the code generation and program layout, or jump to the optimization chapter, which can be read by itself. The lex and parser topics sort of go together.
No, they're not false at all. I'm looking at your definition of Relentlessly Resourceful (RR), as understood from the essay, and his definition of tough. Those two seem to be vastly different.

As I went on to say, where they're not disjoint, they're probably correlated, not causal, and i cite some examples where people i know exhibited Relentless Resourcefulness WITHOUT demonstrating the OP's definition of toughness. (Although, perhaps they meet your definition of tough, which is why you're quickly judging my claim as false, and we're having a miscommunication on terminology).

I can't use your definition of tough, so i responded to his. Look at his third sentence:

"These guys (and gals) were not the young, sheepish,
technical founders you’d expect. These guys are
operators – savvy, confident, operators."

Furthermore, if someone sets out to find RR but looks instead for tough, you'll miss the set of people who are relentlessly resourceful -- but who are still "young, sheepish technical founders." Not all rectangles are squares, etc.

Is that definitive? Is it always true? No, of course not -- we're talking about human properties that vary as much as humans. But I wouldn't want to look for relentless resourcefulness by looking for toughness.

He's looking at confidence & poise as indicators of toughness. He saw the demo day, and he's dividing people into operators and sheepish 'technical founders'.

You may say tough as a shorthand for relentless resourcefulness. He's saying tough to mean the opposite of geek.

So the question, i suppose, is how do you, pg, evaluate people for toughness? The OP seems to be using a mix of posture & anthropology combined with business benchmarks.

"Wimps don’t really get anything done – they don’t release
a product, they don’t make sales, they don’t raise money,
hey balk at big problems, they quit before they should."

His definition of "wimp" seems totally irrelevant to actual performance under pressure, and would be a terrible litmus test. Can you ship without ever pushing through low points? Yes, you can ship crap. Can you make sales & raise money without being RR? Yes, you can be lucky. Is it evident, or can you see -- from a demonstration day! -- when people have balked at big problems or quit before they should? Probably not!

Finally, his definition of wimp/tough might be "true" -- whatever the hell that means -- but i find it useless, and maybe worse than useless if it leads you disqualify many people who are RR. True/False is easy, but useful/useless is much harder to evaluate.

A useful statement about the mental traits of founders would be nice to have. A useful test would be even better. That's what i'm trying to get at.
My recommendation is that you bootstrap your startup for now, this should be possible if your startup is of a social media style thing. Once you have traction, you can try asking here again and maybe you'll get some more interesting advice.
Software is a big, HUGE advantage.

But my advice is still own your own business. So, have a Main Street software business or some other software business but OWN it yourself.

If you don't own it yourself, then you may be better off working your way up to owning 1, 2, ..., McD's yourself.
Right, that was my point. I was trying to be ironic with my claim that all of Africa is South Africa.
Difference between http:// and https:// | ICA
Hi, email me at flarson[at]whiteslate.com, I have some connections in your country and might be able to help you successfully launch your startup.
I worked on http://quest-for-life.org for the Rails Rumble last year.

It's basically an online Drake Equation calculator, with some educational material and references to help inform the parameters.
it's because their idea of businesses isn't based around the web. They start more traditional business, since they aren't web centric like the younger generation.