skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First, suppose Google has value 'x' in terms of signaling to the opposite sex, Apple has value 'y'. The x is already high, as Google has the reputation of a) paying well (whether justified or not) b) hiring the smartest. Women are attracted to intelligence. Now suppose Apple does have a cool factor, there's only an x - y difference in signaling.

You spend majority of your waking hours at work, so the perceived margin has to be very high to justify taking a less satisfying job, but which has higher signaling potential.

For a perceived margin to be high either a) the actual margin is high b) the person has to perceive \epsilon of social status much higher than \epsilon of job satisfaction. Generally, the people who value social status are almost by definition not going to work hard enough to become "half-decent (or better) engineers".

This also ignores the fact that most adults are either already in long term relationships or are celibate (voluntarily or involuntarily). "Looking for a girlfriend/boyfriend" is a temporary state, unless you're really interested in the dating game as a hobby which likely means less time for other hobbies e.g., hacking.

In my case, I'm in a long term relationship, having met my girlfriend while working in a nameless start-up doing email security (hardly "sexy", but plenty of technical challenges that I'd never see where I to work on "yet another app"). She could care less what the name of the company I work for is anyway.

So we're left with several logically valid conclusions:

* Apple hires worse engineers: people who are too interested in status to devote time to studies, people who are more interested in "playing the dating game" rather than fulfilling their passion. Typing this on a MacBook Pro, I see no evidence of this.

* Marginal signaling is really a lot better at Apple than Google. I can't see any evidence of that. Both are household names. Google has a reputation for hiring best, Apple has a reputation for building quality products (implying, hiring best).

* The quality of work is roughly equivalent at Apple and Google and decisions are often made by factors such as one offering work that the other doesn't, etc... People love working for both and only a minority is leaving either to work on "hotter" but less technically challenging applications.

I'll leave judgment for the reader, but something (perhaps reason?) is telling me latter is the case.
Do you reckon I'm the only one in Alaska? (For another month, anyway...)
Whoa there! My post was not some slight against non-programmers or Mac users.

To make help make my argument clear, I picked two extremes of creation and consumption -- you aren't going to be buying anything from iTMS on that Emacs machine, and you aren't going to be reprogramming your OS on the fly on your iPad. The idea was to show contrast.

I also wasn't making a value judgement.

(Also, nice description of Linux from 15 years ago. Do Macs have non-cooperative multitasking yet?)
I'm not sure what easy_install does exactly, but I guess you could replace latest with a version number. On http://code.google.com/p/closure-linter/downloads/ there's a 2.2.1 there, so instead of using "latest", you could use "2.2.1". If you care enough about this, then you probably could do some digging. Having a "latest" means they don't have to update the instructions every release, and for most people this will Just Work.
This hit me like a frikkin ton of bricks.

Especially after going through his Flickr stream. I feel like throwing up.

My wife is 9 months pregnant and about to give birth to a baby girl...we have decided to name Mia-Kalani.

I am having goosebumps right now.

No. Words. To. Express.
We're in Sydney and it took us 7 months to raise a modest Angel round. And even then the Angels only matched our pain money dollar for dollar.
This is chronically unfair. So now the people who have money and are already part of an elite get better service and get their complaints resolved faster? And normal people don't? What is being built here - some type of tech aristocracy where the YC alumni get to be at the top of the pecking order? Those people did not get in there by sheer ability, they got in there by already belonging to some good schools and nicely middle class parents.

Technology should be fair to all.

Back before I even knew that facebook had guidelines I had a facebook app disabled (and associated facebook account). It was not spamming or anything, just inviting people in strongly worded language to download the app. I have sent about 10 emails so far to their accounts, and I have NEVER received a reply back. I've tried pleading, I've tried angry, nothing works.

I just gave up and made another account, that first account is still disabled. I don't care about it anymore - but the lasting impression of this whole situation is this: facebook does not care about developers.

Microsoft have always had frontline people interacting with the developers. Every problem I had during my microsoft days was quickly resolved by some guy working on the product. It never took long and it was never complicated.

Apple is different - because there senior executive take care of major problems. I've sent an email to steve and had the manager of iTunesConnect call me. Schiller has emailed me to solve problems. You can call and talk to a reviewer. Apple cares about their developers and they care about quality, and they will try their best to handle both.

But facebook - so far I've not found a way to break this wall of silence that they have. I guess when we get big and famous, they will start to care - but you know what? Microsoft cares about me even though I am not rich or famous or anything. Same with Apple - even if they have a harder task, as they care a lot about quality.

And no, I don't want the problem resolved anymore, I've moved on and am content being an unimportant small player on the facebook platform. If there is an issue I'll work it out myself or give up - I know there is no way to talk to them.
This was printed in Saturday Evening Post(in 1967), so it did have the attention of the their editors.

On the other hand, Didion said that she submitted pieces there because the pay was good, and the editors "would let you do whatever you wanted".
Yeah, from what I hear it's top of their priority list post the Android release
Actually stuff like this just reminds people why one shouldn't deal with monopoly suppliers who are big enough to ignore you without getting hurt in the process.
For a personal finance "classic" in this vein, I recommend "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin:
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Money-Life-Transforming-Relations...

The book has some interesting things to say about the value of time and, at the very least, forces you to think about the trade-offs of time, money, work and consumption. There's a particularly sobering exercise in the book that has you consider how many productive, non-sleeping hours you have left in your life which provided me with some new perspective I hadn't considered.
"I challenge you to ask yourself what could you delegate, automate or eliminate from your life to free you up for more important things or just spend a little more time with your friends and family?"

So this is the new way to be an online writer - you make up some fluff generalities and the 'challenge' the reader to fix it so that you as a writer don't have to?
YC is already one giant mafia, if you'd like to think of it that way. I'm sure YC classes vote each others' stuff up.

I'm wondering what the recently implemented voting ring detection reveals. Are they all clustered by YC class? Are there overlaps? Or is there an outside group moving the articles up?
That's fine. Will you be by his side on his sick bed? Will his wife?

Whomever it is, I would think is more important.
Or, you know, GetSatisfaction
Assuming all other things being equal, yes. However all things aren't equal and many people live in a particular place because they like the lifestyle, or their family lives there or their kids have great opportunities etc...

You're right though. It's the corollary of startups moving to SF because that's where the investors are.
CPA Instruments
Don't Buy CPA Instruments Until You Read This CPA Instruments Review & CPA Instruments Bonus.
The more I think about it, the more I think the challenges of recruiting are pretty close to identical to those of online dating.

If I were going to do anything in the "revolutionizing recruitment" arena, I'd be looking to folks like OKCupid for inspiration and ideas.
SEOmoz|YOUmoz - Segmenting Important Data through Advanced Segments
I get the impression that many of Dropbox's user base _are_ geeks.

This is not my impression at all. Basically everybody I know uses dropbox, and very few of them are geeks. I was actually introduced to Dropbox by a non-geek boss I had who thought it was the greatest thing she'd ever used and insisted I also get it so we could share files.

Dropbox seems to have done a very good job of penetrating the general market, thanks in no small part to their pretty amazing and minimal UI. It's at the point now where I hear 'normal' people saying things like "can you share it to my dropbox" with the automatic assumption that the other person will know what it means.
So now the worthless criminal assholes at Scribd will monetize your stolen copyrighted content, and take all of it, until you notice, and tell them to stop.

Fuck them. And fuck you for pretending that excuses their utterly amoral destruction of value.

Scribd is one of the most disgusting websites on the Internet. They are thieves who obtain value by stealing it from others. Fuck them.
In addition I'd like to point out that it's generally a good idea to not be obnoxious to the person who is going to handle your FOOD. You might get a little extra in terms of service, but you're practically guaranteed to get a little something extra in your food...
Smart move by Scribd. Diffuse a lot of the "SCRIBD IS PURE EVIL!!!!!" complaints, but only a fraction of a percent of documents will get opted out, so the impact on their revenue is negligible.
easy_install is yet another single-language package manager. It doesn't interop with the legitimate OS package manager's database of installed dependencies, and your admins probably have very little experience with it. Best to run it on one sacrificial box and then turn whatever it leaves behind into a real RPM package (or whatever your platform wants).
Dropbox does however have a network effect. One of the big points, at least for me and most dropbox users I know, is sharing folders. That only works if you're on the same server as everybody else is.
No. Amazon gives you an A record and asks you to make a CNAME for it. So when they change an ELB's IP, they update their A record. So in our case, we just make sure our A records follow along. Either way, a DNS cache holding onto a stale record too long would cause a problem.

Which is why Amazon keeps the ELB active on both the old and new IPs for a period of time.
If the company goes bust convertible debt is worth nothing, like equity.

Not entirely true. Convertible debt is subordinated debt, which means that you don't get the first choice of pickings in bankruptcy court. But you are a creditor, and so there is a possibility of getting some money returned from bankruptcy proceedings.

Where's the upside? Convertible debt seems like a strictly worse investment than stock.

Paul Graham's answer is that convertible debt is worse for the investor but better for the founder. Therefore when founders have power they will choose convertible debt, and the upside for the investor is that they have the option to participate in a potentially profitable deal that otherwise they couldn't.

If pg's theory is correct then entrepreneurs with power should choose convertible debt, and investors should express a preference for equity. And indeed it is not hard to find articles like http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/some-thoughts-on-convertible... where investors make it clear that they don't like convertible debt, and try to convince entrepreneurs that they shouldn't either. (Note, when you're negotiating with someone who is trying to convince you of what you should think, you don't have to look hard for a hidden agenda.)

In abstract theory, the extent to which investors don't like convertible debt should be reflected in their offering worse terms on convertible debt deals. Bias the terms enough, and the investor should become indifferent. However my reading of pg's observation is that different terms are being offered to different investors. So the parallel trend is that a few top angels potentially get better terms than the old equity deals, but most angels get worse terms. Which makes most of the angels even less happy.

As confirmation I note that http://www.sethlevine.com/wp/2010/08/has-convertible-debt-wo... raises the experience of an anonymous super-angel and says a year ago these caps “approximated what I’d pay in equity” that they’re now “33% higher than what I’d normally agree to pay now.”
Christian Louboutin Knotted Double Platform
Mongrel2 1.0 released.
Actually, no. Twitter for iPad is here -http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitter/id333903271
There's so much wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start:
"By staging a series of perceived technology innovations and then adding price decoys, reference prices, obscurity, and bundling, Apple makes us willing to pay more to do the same stuff we did 30 years ago."

Really Ben Kunz? In 1980 I could have a live video chat with my mother? Make movies with a device that fits in my pocket? Access sample chapters to thousands of newly published books without leaving my home? Yeah, I didn't think so. But I suppose he thinks I've been duped just like all the other sheeple out there...
Good story.

Lessons learned:

1. Business is not 'fair'.

2. Its unrealistic to expect playing field to be level.

3. Its about who you know.

Big thanks to all parties involved for the reminder.
I'd call it a disgusting and amoral move by a company whose goal is clearly to steal value created by others without sharing it appropriately.

It's disappointing that anybody would call such a gutless, value-free, unethical move "smart".

Are HNers all, like Scribd and (apparently) you, such uncreative, worthless sacks of shit that they must resort to theft and the praise of theft of value? What happened to creating value?
When John Ousterhout and I started Electric Cloud we raised a $7m series A on the back of a PowerPoint presentation and some half written code in less than two months.

We were highly organized about how we approached VCs and we had prepared well before the first meeting, but ultimately it came down to one partner at USVP clicking with the idea and running with it. They called us back for a second meeting and gave us a term sheet.
I'd bet there are voting rings on HN. Perhaps not as bad as was on Digg. But I'm sure it's here. PG made a comment about it the other day, offhand, in something about getting some code/idea help about fighting it.
My favorite local coffee shop is like that. I know the owner fairly well, and he always drops by to chit chat whenever I come in. I refuse to go to any of the other coffee shops in town, even if the coffee is cheaper or marginally better, because I've built a relationship with the owner.

When I was shopping for a new motorcycle, I bought one from the dealership that's 45 minutes away instead of the one that's 5 minutes away because of the reputation the close one has of ripping people off. The bike I was looking at was actually available cheaper at the closer one, but I'd rather give my money to a dealer that's not going to try to scam me later on, even if it's less convenient or more expensive.

I truly appreciate good service, and I'll happily pay more for it. I'm surprised more businesses don't care about excellent customer service, or is it that a lot of people truly don't care about service?
The danger with tactics like this is that the customers don't overthink tipping as much as the service staff, particularly if they are from a different country/culture. I tried to tip about $1/drink in New York, but when I got a free drink ("for being stuck" - volcano) I didn't know whether I was expected to tip the value, tip a little extra, or just take it as a favour. I would guess that on a bill, rather than a free drink, there's a good chance that people don't realise as well.
Lemmachine - A web framework in Agda
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The New iPod Touch with Dual Cameras, Retina Screen
Recently I went to Tokyo for some business, including a presentation. My brother is having a tough time at the moment. I told him to call me if he needed me. He asked if it wouldn't disrupt business.

I told him that I didn't care if I was in front of two hundred people and the Emperor: if he needs me, I will walk out, because he is my brother.

I do not feel that it is impolite to be very, very strict about keeping my commitments. Indeed, to the extent I successfully do so, that makes me a better person to do business with. And as an honest businessman, I'll tell you: there is no price, monetary or otherwise, at which I am willing to sell an SLA which trumps my family. If you require one, seek other providers.
Second this. Worked at Indinero two summers ago -- she taught me rails :)
What complicates things, and makes them worse, is that a large amount of the content is uploaded by people who are not the original authors/publishers, and don't actually have the rights.

As far as I can tell, Scribd's primary business model is monetizing pirated content.
Facebook has no soul and Mark Fuckerburg is the man who sold the world. The 2010's are set to be a time of great chaos and creation, something like the 60's. Facebook's facade will melt in this furnace. Once the shepherd is gone, the sheep will scatter. You and I both saw it coming, along with a few other outliers...
Maybe I'm just looking at this the wrong way, but the way I'm seeing it they've developed an application with "layers" (or "windows" if you like).

Wasn't the selling point of the iPad that it was a simple to use platform and device, with everything running fullscreen and without confusing stacks and layers of applications and windows? That it wasn't a "normal" computer?

Amazing how quickly things go full circle these days.
When you build a site with user submitted content and voting, you have two immediate problems you need to solve before you can even get started:

- How are you going to deal with spam
- How are you going to deal with gaming

They're actually related problems, since the aim of both is to drive people to a given website. Since that's demonstrably valuable in terms of cash money, it's an absolute certainty that people will try to take advantage of it.

You really need to bake something in to handle it from the word go.
AWStats (http://awstats.sourceforge.net/) is decent if you just want some simple log-based analytics.

Don't know what you mean by limited, but logfile-based analytics software doesn't have access to as much data as software that can use other data sources like cookies (ie it has difficulty tracking sessions).

If I might ask, why exactly do you need to make your analytics completely undetectable to users? In most cases tracking pixels and the like have no effect whatsoever on the user experience.
How about all the pesticides though?
Pontificating, generalizing writing is nothing new, unfortunately.
Like Seth Godin says, don't be afraid to fire your customers if they are negatively impacting your business. If you have an ass who is causing you to neglect your real good customers (the ones who give good feedback and will work with you), that customer should go.
Ed Hardy
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You may find AWStats helpful: http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

Most log-based analytics tools cannot filter out bot traffic as well as a JavaScript tool would. Additionally you would be missing other information that could be obtained from JavaScript like supported Flash versions, screen resolution, etc.
The Stig's ID is 'Top Gear' secret no more
Sweden is country advanced enough that you would assume that they don't just charge people with rape without there being some evidence to support the charge.

Is this really necessary? You're now actively participating in the smear campaign.
How many people here ever click on "new"? How many stories just disappear without hitting the front page? How many accounts need to be involved to make a particular story get to the front page?

I'm sure that the answers respectively are, "rather few", "the vast majority" and "not many". And there you have the raw ingredients for a voting ring to form. As a matter of principle I would never be involved with such, and I have a natural dislike for anyone that I think is. But the ingredients are there.

More than that, you still have a popularity effect. People who vote on new articles have to prioritize what they read in some fashion. Speaking personally, it is natural to choose to look at articles with interesting titles, or which are submitted by someone you recognize as being a consistent source of good content. Therefore if someone like patio11 submits an article, it has a significant advantage. As does anything involving YC. (Of course promoting YC is the whole point of this site, so I don't mind that at all. And I'm guilty at looking at content from people I trust before content from people I've never heard of.)

Memory says that jacquesm mentioned once that he had turned down an offer of money to post certain articles from companies that were looking for good pr. (I don't swear that I correctly remember who it was.) He may have turned them down, but I'm sure they asked again, and if they asked around enough I'm sure that they found a taker. And if so, then you have the dark side here on HN.
I really connected to this piece a lot: I'm in my 20s, in NYC for the first time, grew up in the South, and am completely infatuated with this place for some unable-to-be-explained reason.

I suppose that a lot of us who have been very young in New
York have the same scenes in our home screens. I remember
sitting in a lot of apartments with a slight headache about
five o’clock in the morning. I had a friend who could not
sleep...

It's so easy to fall in love with this city but so hard to describe the reason why. She did a great job.
It can be practical if you don't want the site to contain JavaScript (which is nice when using NoScript)
Same reaction here. In particular, it doesn't explain why this is a turning point. We've been hearing about the "information economy" for 30 years now. Why is 2010 suddenly its long-awaited triumph? The 1980s' argument was the advent of the widely accessible personal computer, and the 1990s' argument was the rollout of the internet to the general public. What's the 2010s' argument?
I'm looking for open source projects with proper structure, modularity and code design, UI design is not interesting. Thank you for examples.
VC 'Super Angels': Filling a Funding Gap or Killing 'The Next Google'?
Caring for Your Cloth Diapers- A How To Guide
It's only a 'fuck you' if you truly believe that you deserve priority over my wife.
Hm, seems to work for me on Ubuntu 10.4 (Flash 10,1,82,76)
Automated and intelligent surveillance project INDECT pales 1984
Think of it as an interest network-- albeit one that can get noisy, if you're not careful.

I got started realizing I can follow smart people doing phds, entrepreneurs, hackers etc who are doing things I'm interested in. And occasionally, I can ask them questions.

My followee list has evolved over time when my interests change or when someone gets too noisy.
Except that they didn't really fix anything, because almost no one knows Scribd distributes their content and hence hardly anyone will enable that setting.