skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They do have an enormous sample size. Much, much larger than any rigorous scientific studies based on getting undergrads to fill out surveys.

They've done similar analyses for things like self-reported heights, and photos:

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online...

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/
Testing for correlation would be awesome, but Joel (and many others) always talk about how we're incapable of measuring ability.

This gets complicated by how we'd test for correlation--we'd need to track ability quantitatively, which creates all kinds of problems.
…takes 41KB, and does not work on systems without Flash installed.
It's a safety issue, not a luxury.
There is a correlation between GPA and working hard.

Yes there are awesome programmers who have terrible GPAs because they dropped out of high school to found their own company, or who refused to do any non-programming subjects since kindergarten.

But you want to hire somebody he has been working their hardest on everything they have been given to do - however uninteresting - since the age of 11.
The problem is not CVS or Git or SVN. The problem is fundamental and actually very widespread. Within a given semantic domain, one program, one database manipulated by one program, one OS process, we can enforce all sorts of useful guarantees, from consistency of the database to guaranteeing interesting and useful properties about the data to strong typing (in the program case) and so on. Once you leave the island, you are back in the untyped swamp of arbitrary code. Git makes progress by enforcing more interesting properties on a larger chunk of stuff than CVS, but nobody can enforce those interesting properties on the entire universe.

When you learn to see this problem, you start to see it everywhere; it's so fundamental and pervasive you can't hardly even see it.
Tying related HN posts together?
HN is awesome, but one place where it fails is doing a fuzzy lookup of your topic (by title and url) as you type them in. Sure it would make the interface a more complex, but it would help gather the discourse on umpteen threads into fewer threads. Perhaps it would still create a new thread with a new subject, but it would link to the older thread, maybe by setting the URL to be the older thread's URL. How about using the right side of the title/url/text area to have a scrollable dropdown of potentially related threads? Again, a minimal interface is great, but I see the same thread topics over and over again.

I'm sure there are quite a few threads on this very topic, but I'm not sure how to find them.
I don't get why the response claims that the fixed price makes weed a stable currency. In principle, it just pegs weed to the dollar, right?
Their website is also worth a visit

http://www.sylentmite.com/index0.html

Especially if you fancy clickmaps, animated gifs and bright yellow background. The stuff is really cool, though.
1) Research - What are the competitors doing? Can obviously give you an idea of starting point.

2) Test - Use Google AdWords and split test to a landing page that advertises the service w/only difference being price point.

eg - Write up a pair of ads with your value proposition and different price points, see % click through.

You can't spend enough time on this step, very easy way to refine down to a good starting point.

EG:

Online Bookkeeping Service
For just $19.97 a month get
access to professional bookeepers.

v

Online Bookkeeping Service
For just $29.97 a month get
access to professional bookeepers.

3) Tweak - Google "Price Elasticity Testing".

If you wind up charging more (or less) grandfather early users on the higher price, or move them over to the new lower price immediately.

People reguarly leave this step out, but the difference between 24.97 vs. 29.97 may be the difference between exceptionally profitable and mediocre, 100% worth doing.

Detailed refining is tough to do without scale but should be one of your first planned A/B tests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand

http://economics.about.com/cs/micfrohelp/a/priceelasticity.h...

http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/06/one-simple-secret-f...
false. seriously read the wikipedia entry.
That last stat about reading level bothers me. "Ok, before anyone gets offended about reading level vs race, let's show you a stat that confirms another stereotype: religious people are stupid! And atheists are smartest of all! Scientifically proven with a reading test based on the lengths of words, and metrics I just made up. And don't worry that almost half of the data points belie my analysis, ha ha ha, it confirms your prejudices, so it's ok!"
Myths of Popular Psychology
> Every non-trivial program has significant challenges in it; if you can't see them, it's probably your lack of experience or your casual assumption that it must be easy, not the fact that the task itself is that easy.

I remember Joel talking about Wasabi, purpose built language for making their main product cross platform. I see many business software vendors doing this e.g., SAP with ABAP, but I'm curious as to whether there has been a significant ROI from it (I heard mixed things about its current status of both Wasabi and ABAP and since I have no background in business software I'll refrain from commenting further on this practice).

I agree that are there are significant UI/UX challenges in a system like a bug tracker (and quite frankly, most of the existing offerings are a disaster in that space). There's also a whole slew of fairly interesting problems you could do in the greater space (integration with a VCS/code-review/diff tools in comprehensive system like Github, Google's internal tools or some of Atlassian's offerings).

It's also far from a trivial problem, which is why most companies are willing to pay for bug tracking systems rather than write their own (although, it used to be common to use heavily customized versions of Bugzilla): problems don't have to be "hard-core" to be non-trivial or extremely useful (much like Joel advices, I'd refuse to work in a company that didn't have a bug tracker). If I ever gave an impression that I considered a bug tracker trivial, I apologize for it.

What I should say instead is if you're looking for a "hard-core CS" challenge (systems, networks, data structures and algorithms) -- and certainly only a small minority of people are both qualified to and are interested in working in that space, in reality these topics involve lots of fairly unglamorous work -- a bug tracker seems like the wrong thing to work on.

I wouldn't make the whole point, if Joel didn't spread the whole "we're hiring best programmers to solve the most difficult problems" aura and has instead stated "we may not be the most hard-core, but we build great products and treat developers as more than just cogs". The latter point sounds a lot more honest and still suffices in terms of recruitment. There are many people (including many hackers I know and respect) who are passionate specifically about development tools and they're the people you want to be working on development tools who aren't going to be interested in Wall Street (or any other place where building development tools isn't a core competency, which excludes most other software and Internet firms with exceptions of the largest, who have custom needs) in the first place.
Ask HN: How much would you pay for the perfect domain?
Let's say you're a bootstrapped company about to launch an amazing new web service. You've been thinking about the perfect domain and a quick search reveals that that name is currently up for auction! How much would you be willing to pay for that domain considering that every dollar you spend means that you have a shorter runway?
I was curious enough about this to ask a pothead friend about this, his statement is that buying in such small quantities he expects to pay $20-$25 per gram for "high grade" plant material at the pot stores^W^Wmedical marijuana dispensaries in SF. "$10 is what suburban tourists pay for a gram of twigs, seeds, and brown mexiweed on haight street". was his direct quote.
This should be posted as a challenge:

http://armorgames.com/play/1716/gemcraft
In my analysis, I did a google search for "colleges by student population" and got this as the top link: http://www.happyschoolsblog.com/largest-us-universities-by-s....

The list was created from 2006 data. One thing to notice, I skipped over Texas A&M and University of South Florida and picked up Penn State (because I'm from Jersey, and half of my high school went there).

The TC article article also omits these two schools, and adds in UCLA and USC. (The author is a USC grad herself.) Even if she did find the same list, why also skip over A&M and USF?

a more accurate list would have come from more recent data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_colleges_...

Yes, it's possible, but I think pretty unlikely she'd independently decide to drop the same two schools that I did, assuming she found the same source.
One thing I love about HN is, when I post shit like this comment MICRO$OFT DIE I get imidiately downvoted for the right reasons not cos of speling that makes reading comments based on karma work.
Actually they do NOT have a non-compete clause. He can work for competitors. He does have a confidentiality clause. Although I would have thought they'd need evidence that he breached it. I've worked with many ex-CxOs who have had similar clauses. And they are all very careful to not talk about past work experience.

Maybe HP has a case, but it sure feels like they're kind of upset because they know Hurd is a pretty stellar CEO (all things considered), and it kind of sucks to lose him to a chief competitor.
"It looks like you're writing a business plan"
If you mean consistently amusing recursion, then yes.
You're also not allowed to say non-flattering things about people who HN holds dear. I guess that fits under 'inconvenient truths'.

This place is great, but there is a bit of orthodoxy in the mindset - quite unfortunate, actually, as I don't think that fits at all with the 'hacker' mindset.
Apparently the effect loops endlessly, always the same. In fact it can be replicated with 1995 tech, i. e. animated GIF.
That depends: how much additional revenue would the "perfect domain name" generate for me?
I have seen many HTML5 demos that have taken up 50% or more of my CPU. So, what's the difference?
Are all the features accessible in non-contract plans?

I've got a few contract-only perks here in Canada on Rogers, such as the 6GB data plan add-on for $30/mo, and an "Employee Purchase Program" discounted voice service at $17/mo.

I don't think you can get non-contract data plans for under $30, and that only buys you 250MB/month, and voice plans start at around $25-30/month.

I may be able to set up a similarly-priced plan up here, but I would lose out on many of the important features (tethering, visual voice mail, larger data caps, free evening/weekend calling, etc.)
Important Algorithms: Beam Search
Mozilla Labs Announces Open Web Gaming Platform/Developer Competition
Are you using TC name for your own free PR? It look like it to me.
The Zen Way of Life
0. Guest blogging.

1. Create an infographic and promote it. Not the spammy kind.

2. Link from Wikipedia if it's very relevant to some article there. If the Wiki authors find it not relevant they will remove it and you should then move on.

3. Promote it here. You could have gotten few visits just now had you mentioned this website which apparently "help make other peoples' lives easier".

4. Contact the bloggers to write about it. If it's "really useful" they will write about it.

5. Do some active promotion on twitter, facebook and stumbleupon. That's no brainer.

6. Make sure your site is coded well, good tags and all that jazz. It helps in SEO.

Just few of the ways you can start promoting.
Thanks for the feedback RBr!

Actually you're the second user today to tell me the lack of export formats is a problem. I plan to offer export options, but it is not simple. There are some features like audio, associations or exercises that cannot be easily reproduced in other formats. An XML file would be a good start though.

Connecting with existing LMS: you're right I need to look more into that.
You could always use http://searchyc.com/ to find threads on the topics you are interested in.
I'm probably having a bit of a downer on the subject as I watched Threads last night - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

While quite possibly the least cheerful film ever made - it was based on a UK military planning exercise (Square Leg) that was actually pretty optimistic. In the optimistic version - only 90% of the population of the UK is killed, in the realistic ones it is much worse.
But if nobody hears them - do they make a sound?
It's not as accurate and still subject to add-ons that munge HTTP headers.
Sunrise/Sunset and Civil Twilight times for OL8 4EJ in August 2010 | Good Stuff
Clickable http://www.getaquirk.com/
>Connecting with existing LMS: you're right I need to look more into that.

Please get in touch with me. My profile will tell you why and my contact details.
While it may be a bit of a time-sink, it's also very streamlined and efficient to consume. I love how visually simple it is: no images, the careful use of dark/light text, formatting of comments, lack of ads, etc. Compared to the other sites I still frequent, admittedly less and less since discovering HN, the differences are not minor. Definitely becoming a big fan though still very much an HN rookie.
This is ridiculous ... not that I'm an expert or anything but $20 is the cost of a gram. How is this guy going to claim to have research without trying to buy it himself? This article is completely bunk. Compelling title since people love to discuss the economics of drugs but the premise is way off.

Also as someone who used to know the economics of weed, there are nickel, dime, and dub ($20) bags. This is for people like high school kids and street drug dealers that sell at this level though. I would add that you can probably buy dime bags from the hippies in Golden Gate Park SF, but that feels much more like a crack deal than some legitimate transaction.

You can also grab a quarter (1/4 of an ounce) but it's not going to cost you $25 ... it will cost you more than $100.

I love how this was good enough to be published in the Financial times even though it was wrong. There's a reason that the Freakonomics guys went and lived with the crack dealers: they wanted actual research, not second hand rumors.
Ask HN:  What are my options for cross discipline study after I graduate?
I'm a Junior in a Computer Engineering program. It's one of the largest majors in the University and I get a little annoyed that it doesn't leave any room for interesting yet unrelated classes. I would love to take an upper level Econ class as well as upper level Math classes. But the university is working hard to get me to graduate someday (I am already planning on graduating with 60% more credits than normal). I've resigned myself to the fact that if I want to study number theory in depth then it's not going to happen during my undergraduate. What are my options down the line? Have any of you gone back for a second degree "just because"? Is there any basic prep I should try to squeeze in now which would aid me in future study?
In school they always taught us that if you read something to influenced the final piece, you should source it (else you are plagiarism.

Now, journalism is not held to high standards for this sort of thing, especially tech journalism.
What is his point? Flash rules HTML5 drools? Who cares. If a developer wants to use Flash then he can use Flash. If he doesn't, then he won't.
I think you must insert what are the benefits for people to use it. Just a phrase. Why I have to use it? What is in it for me?

Your homepage it's too "obscure".
Dharmesh Shah touched on this at Startup Bootcamp last year and expands on what petervandijck discusses. Effectively, there is a financial benefit (based on longevity) and financial cost (acquisition) to pricing, and the goal is to make the two overlap as little as possible. I highly recommend watching his talk:

http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/11042/Dharmesh-On-Start...
People ignored by surveys could be those with the strongest opinions
Yes, and a point that isn't mentioned in the article is that the price of weed might be dropping at roughly the same rate the American dollar is being inflated. So what we could be looking at is a coincidental equilibrium. As more US states decriminalize marijuana the costs (risk and otherwise) of production and distribution decrease. I'm in Denver, CO and just the other day walked past a small police station with a cannabis dispensary right next to it.

The times they are a-changin'.

* Edit: Made my initial point less ambiguous.
Sorry, my wording was poor. That story is a parable, and I was trying to remind you of it, as a logical consequence of running a business as a co-op.

there are also a lot of successful, democratically run business places

I'm not aware of any. Can you cite examples?
It's fine for small sites. You'll know when your site is too big for that feature from the pain in your inbox.
Eh their analysis method is not too hot. From the comments section:

"The phrases included in the black boxes are the top 50 phrases most statistically correlated to that group. We calculated this as follows:

1. We calculated the frequency of every 1, 2, and 3 word phrase for the whole population.
2. We calculated those same frequencies within each race/gender pair.
3. For each phrase, we divided #2 by #1.
4. This is the propensity of a given group to use a given phrase.
5. The list you see is the phrases with the 50 highest ratios of #2/#1."

So even if a group uses a phrase 1.001x more than the population average, it might still be listed, if there are no actual phrase-usage differences (i.e., all phrase ratios will be small, and the top 50 will be arbitrary).
ITT: People getting trolled to help him convert a website from flash to html5.
Yeah, several years ago I go stuck trying to integrate a Google Search Appliance that a client went off and purchased on their own. The documentation was a joke and the code samples were sparse. The only support you got was a Google Group. Pretty sad considering it cost 20k.
H-1B Visa Cap for 2011 Has Not Been Met Yet
There's a reason why Google mentions it as Total estimated earnings not Total earnings.
Ask HN: How much do founders pay themselves?
This is something I've always wondered about... When you take a VC round, how do you (as a founder) get your salary determined? Is it purely up to the board and investors? Is it up to you? How does it compare -- is it the bare minimum to live on, so that everything can go into the company? Is it comparable to an executive you'd hire? Somewhere in between?

I'm very curious about the calculus. I imagine it varies quite a bit by the type of investment made (e.g. angel vs. VC vs. institutional), but that's just a guess.
If this banner is flashing, we may have just given you an epeliptic seizure!!
He should have cleaned his room before taking a picture in it. If the debate was so tiresome between flash/html 5, why add fuel to the fire?

I still dont see the need to justify your purchase/platform/technology. build things that your consumers like, use VB script, Cobol, or powerbuilder for all I care- just make it cool.
Old men used to bemoan the price of gas and the morning paper.

Times have changed!
I enjoyed this article, but I would suggest a minor correction: PG is phenomenal, but I don't believe he is responsible for shifting the balance of power from investors to founders. I think that's a function of technology and the Internet itself, as barriers to start a startup continue to be lowered. In fact, PG himself said in a TC interview there was a time (not long ago) when you almost literally had to ask permission from investors to launch a startup. That has changed, and would have been the case with or without PG, I'm fairly sure. I do, however, believe PG seriously helps to educate, encourage, and facilitate startups on the road to success within this natural function, a handful directly as YC companies, and many more through everything else he does, like his essays, Startup School, and HN.

One thing I'd add to the list of dislikes of HN is how some downvoting is applied. I think downvotes are great as a mod tool for shunning comments that are hollow, trollish, or otherwise don't contribute to the discussion. What I dislike is seeing downvotes applied carelessly because of casual disagreement with a commment which is otherwise well thought out. I'd rather people actually reply expressing their dissent, which at least gives the chance for rebuttal and further debate. Downvoting is the easy way out, and tends to look rather insulting to me, because being at zero or sub-zero relegates serious commenters to the same class as trolls. I don't think that encourages a healthy commenting community.
Sean is a really great guy. He helped my partner and I out when we were sort of at a crisis point. He reached out and gave us several hours of his time and put us in touch with a great advisor who we are still working with.
The whole truth, is not necessarily the real truth.
My favorite kind of interdisciplinary teams are the kind which consist of two scientists from different but related disciplines, like crypto and evolutionary algorithms, for instance. Keep in mind that this combination is not what will best take you to market but will be what provides the new technology.
Based on what I see in the local paper, in the medical marijuana dispensaries here in Boulder, regular prices range from around $12 to $16 per gram for high grade medical marijuana. There are a variety of specials that bring it down to around $10, but that price seems low as a regular price. I suspect price varies a fair amount by location. I have heard in CA the prices are closer to $20 per gram in the dispensaries there.

Interestingly enough, the price at the dispensaries seems to be about what street prices were before the medical marijuana dispensaries became so prevalent, maybe even a tad lower.
Paraphrased, not paragraphed. And while it would be nice if it were cited, it's not plagiarism as I understand it. You don't have a leg to stand on.
The perfect domain name today might not be the best name tomorrow. Really think about what you want your domain to say..if anything. Don't corner yourself in by your domain name. I am sure a variation or a unique name is avaialbe. Take that perfect domain name and play with it and see what comes up. You might find an even better domain at the standard registration rate.

To really answer your question I would have to weigh the cost(are we talking hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?) against the return. Is this the most common word or phrase for your service that a user would search for? Or is it too generic?
I work in the equities group in an investment bank. Joel's probably right about a lot of wall street jobs but certainly not all of them. I'm not even involved with the most math/CS intensive stuff but I still work on:

- Creating/consuming "real-time" data feeds with thousands of events per second

- Custom pub/sub in-memory databases

- Complex event processing on streaming data

- Homegrown data structure libraries designed for low-latency applications

Honestly, it's a lot more interesting than what I used to do at large public websites. The hours are no worse and when you include the bonus I bring home 2x as much. The cap is also insanely high, even for people who want to stay coding 90% of the time.

Sure, it's nothing like working at a startup. There's lots more meetings, you're a cog in a giant machine and no one outside of the company ever gets to see what you do. I bet working at a small hedge fund/prop shop approaches the best of both worlds.

It gets frustrating when so many otherwise knowledgeable folks write off an entire industry.