skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I image he would make loads more if he used a simpler distribution platform like Steam.
I don't think he was saying that. He was saying that a simple idea didn't need dozens of people.
Apple is working on a Multi-band Cellular Antenna for MacBooks
A desire for privacy need not have a devious root.

When I am working on a nascent idea, I am often fanatical about privacy. I absolutely do not want my most trusted friends or colleagues to so much as look at what I am doing. Not because I am doing poor work or because they might disapprove. Rather, the mere knowledge that my work is being consumed puts me in the mode of communicating rather than creating. I begin naturally thinking in terms of clarifying and explaining and consolidating, whereas when a work is mine alone, I can freely explore and leave a mess. The effect is disasterous for poorly-formed ideas. I absolutely must explore until I understand the natural form of what I am trying to create. If I think about accomodating the eyes of others too soon, I will be hampered in my explorations and may not do my best work.
If the high price is only for the ie6 work, you won't scare them off.

$125/hour for regular work - $350/hour for ie6 work.

People will get the message.
Seems like this could have been solved without mongodb by:

1. Moving the inserts to a adync background job

2. Use raw SQL instead of activerecord for the inserts.

I'm used to postgres though, I know it can handle heavy writes at the same time as heavy reads just fine without replication.
WARNING: this rant might sound like I hate you, but I'm really trying to help you.

First of all I am a programmer. I understand your frustration at not being able to build stuff yourself. A lot of people (MBA students, engineering students) have come up to me and asked me to build "their idea." They want to act as the business/marketing/money guy, and I can be the slave. Fine.

Unfortunately, these people don't understand just how time consuming building a webapp "exactly how I envisioned it." They think that I can just do some Ruby on Rails magic over a week and boom they're set for life.

What you are basically asking of us to build you a web application for a $0 salary with a 49% percent share of nothing. The math is quite easy: 0 + 0*0.49 = 0.

And now, let's talk about your idea, which would be a cool application if it existed. But there are a lot of problems. First of all, every single university is different when it comes to housing. A lot of students may stay in dorms at, say, NYU or Stanford, but where I'm at (UT Austin), most people don't live on campus. Every uni also has different policies, and sometimes a uni might have multiple policies (for say undergrad vs grad students). And why can't a Stanford student just use the official Stanford dorm finder. If you want to build an "apartment finder," forget it. There is so much nasty stuff in dealing in that market that I would never touch it. Mostly, no one will give you the data you need.

So go back and think about your idea and just how difficult building your idea out really is. It's not just some easy magic fairy dust, though many people think so.

And as a last thing, you said that you'd act like the marketing/business-research guy. I don't see any marketing or business research in this post! Have you talked to your university about if this would help or possible? Or would they even give you the data you need? Have you talked with realtors to see if you can somehow get data of all open apartments in an area? (hint: they don't want to; it would hurt their business).
I've got a couple of places in Dallas I'd gladly register to bitch about.

I hope they eventually expand too, but from what I gather the problems in NYC are vastly magnified because of a) how tight the market is due to height control restrictions on housing and b) the sheer cost of housing. I'm living in Tucson, AZ, right now and paying about $550 for a pretty nice one bedroom that would probably cost $2K in Manhattan and 1,400 in Brooklyn. If this one doesn't work out, I break the lease for $1,100, and although it sucks, I can find another place of similar quality relatively easily and am out a lot of money but not a catastrophic amount.

If I do the same in New York, I'm out a TON of money and have to do a lot of shopping, at least from what I understand.
More than half of the Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. 
More than half of the Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. The reason? It is cheap and the taxes are low and you don't need to live in Delware.

This just doesn't smell right. It is like one of those tax loopholes that major corporations take advantage of.

What are your thoughts on Delaware incorporation?
You should read the actual ruling if you want details, but the two issues you mention are unrelated.

Here's what the actual ruling said on the second issue: "Second, the court determined that iParadigms’ use of each of the plaintiffs’ written submissions qualified as a "fair use" under 17 U.S.C. § 107 and, therefore, did not constitute infringement. In particular, the court found that the use was transformative because its purpose was to prevent plagiarism by comparative use, and that iParadigms’ use of the student works did not impair the market value for high school term papers and other such works".

And it goes into detail about how their use satisfies the standard pillars of fair use.
It definitely depends on the algorithm. It also depends on the language. A lot of the difficulty of learning Haskell, for example, is in the type system. A dynamically typed FP lang like Clojure has a shallower learning curve.
It's a lovely chapter! Thanks for pointing it out.

Programming as an intellectual activity is the only art form that allows you to create interactive art. ... . The world needs more weird people who know how things
work and who love to ﬁgure it all out.

It's inspiring to see him talking about the beauty of (software) engineering as a means of making which has the quality of an art.
If facebook hadn't taken off, I doubt anyone here would know who Zuckerberg was. He rode a fad to fame and capitalized on it and made many a blunder along the way. He's no different than Kevin Rose and Digg. Facebook's popularity will wane, people will abandon it; many people already are in the sense that they don't check it much anymore. Something else will come along and the crowd will have a new toy.
There is a file called Tadpole.js I doubt there will be an egg. Maybe we turn into frogs after a while!
Reddit had quite a bit more downtime and lag problems (frequently 12+ hours) than Digg before Digg went to v4.

So while 100 employees for Digg might be overkill, 6 employees is too few.
And if you don't like Java you can still target the JVM with a fast but more expressive JVM language - Clojure or Scala.
It's more massive, but the radius is bigger as well. It could be as low as 1.5 Gs. Modifying the gravitational formula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earths_gravity), it's m/r^2, so 3/(1.4^2) = 1.53 Gs. That's neglecting any local variations.
Surprisingly not so.

If you have a body with a spherically symmetric mass distribution, from the outside it always has exactly the same gravitational field as a point mass at the centre.

Proof: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mechanics/sphshel...
Perl is a methodology. ;)
It was actually a mixture of both. The first 'book' I read was http://createyourproglang.com/, which pointed me in the right direction as far as next steps. Personally I think the book is a little light on details, but it's much more approachable than anything else I saw.

Most of my learning was through experimentation and lots of time on Wikipedia. The theory stuff mainly came from Wikipedia, then once I had a handle on basic theory I started having a look at how other people had implemented sections of programming languages, mainly sticking to implementations done in high-level languages where I could.

Strangely one of the things I found most helpful was looking through the instruction sets for Virtual Machines. For some reason seeing the operations broken down into chunks like that just 'clicked' in my head.

It's an absolutely huge field to try to digest, and to be honest I still really don't have a good handle on many aspects of it (I've never written a garbage collector for instance) but the biggest thing for me was just getting past the point where I could understand 50% of it, that was when it stopped feeling like 'voodoo'.

I've started work on writing a book that offers more info on this in as simple and approachable a way as possible, I'd be interested to know if this is something people are interested in...
Firefox 4 works! or so I've been told. Text rendering only looks good on Mac I've heard. Daniel is looking into that soon though..
In this case Java also greatly simplified distribution. Want to serve an OpenGL game over the web with Python, Ruby? Until HTML 5 Audio and WebGL take hold - good luck with that.
Indeed it is Tumblr's erorr page (http://tumblr.com/). It's interesting (re: shady) that they don't put their name or logo anywhere on the page. Most people visitors will never know it's Tumblr's fault when they attempt to visit a Tumblr-hosted site and run into this page.
Great idea. Couple of notes (I am running Chrome on Mac)

- You have a drop shadow on the main content. However, it does not show up on the bottom, only the top and side.

-on http://www.votetocracy.com/outcomes.html, the checkmark icons are overlapping the font

- You button text is being cut off

- Is there a reason why you need my entire personal information (address, zip code)

Other than some css fixes, looks good.
Seems like destroying all of the historical data killed Digg. Everything else people can get over, but why destroy data? It wasn't Twitter.
That would be rather easy. Make a bookmarklet that redirects you to a site, which then presents you the page with an overlay. Cross-site scripting policies prevent a naive implementation.

I think it already has been tried. I don't think it's all that useful, but if you really want, send me an email (see my profile for address), and I will build it for you.
I did something similar to learn a bit of Haskell (to knock the rust off my C geared brain) by picking through a bunch of the problems in http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/H-99:_Ninety-Nine_Haskell...

I can say that it has indeed improved my Python scripting as well.
Hi,

I was going over your past comments and it looks like we have very similar views (though, mine may be nowhere as extensive). Right from your views on whining about paying taxes, realities of globalization, the tendency to be blunt and directly address the facts underlying an issue instead of being politically correct or soft pedal it, your incisive comments, ability to grasp and have very logical opinions on very diverse topics - they are impressive. I also found your comments, while some were very tough, were also very fair, which I repect in a person.

Can I a request a favor from you: Would you mind reviewing/critiquing my business idea/application for YC?

I think I can be considered as an outsider to the tech industry and relatively new to the world of web startups, the perspectives of a person with as much experience in the technical/start up world as you can be very helpful. (not to mention your no bull but modest approach, as was apparent in your comments)

If you are ok with it, can we discuss further on email? In which case, it would be perfectly fine with me if you want to communicate through an anonymous email id (I can understand, you don't know me) and I can give you information to establish my credentials through my linkedin profile or any other agreeable and credible method.

It would be great if you can let me know either way, either as a reply to this 'comment' or to this email id: skowmunk at gmail.

Thanks,
Skomunk.

(ps: Dunno if you would believe, but "Great explanations, you have put ...." and this were definitely not pre-planned or anything like that. It was after posting it that I started going through your past comments and a "why not try asking?" just stuck)
Then you've dropped too low. You certainly don't do it for $1. But I've found that whenever there are other companies with ideological bents (like anti-IE6) I can almost certainly always crush them economically and with respect to quality.
I can read faster than bloggers can talk. Waste of time.
I am just using this now. It seems very nice - cleaner than SDL.

One thing to watch out for if you use the unreleased 2.0 branch of the library, is that the OS X port is not quite there yet. So if you want to target that platform it may be better to use the stable 1.x branch.

http://www.sfml-dev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3214
I rather more care about the color of the boathouse at hereford.
How people actually cheat is beyond me; I've never had the inclination to do so.

I do expect the papers to be read by a real person. And in the case you described, that should be enough for the professor to call the student in and talk to them. Whats the difference between a person going "I think you're plagiarizing" and a machine doing the same? Besides a machine doing it faster.

Keep in mind what my objection is here: the storage and use of my works, not the service itself. Why can't TurnItIn do what you suggested (perhaps in a sarcastic manner) and subscribe to these services instead?
The analogy is stretched too thin. The meaningful dichotomy outlined first is idea vs code. I think there are probably other meaningful dichotomies within the tech itself, but I don't think tools/materials is the right one.
I think both are true. It is true that we aren't good at functional programming because we are not practiced. It is also true that functional programming makes some things intrinsically harder to do than in the imperative case. This is because modern functional programming gains its power by restricting the programmer, and building on those restrictions.

(Sometimes I get in trouble when I try to distinguish between "new functional" and "old functional", but despite superficial similarities they are diametrically philosophically opposed. Old functional, embodied by Lisp, works by trying to empower the programmer, and builds on that; new functional works by restricting the programmer and building on what guarantees we get from those restrictions. Haskell and Lisp may share some terminology when it comes to list manipulation but I would actually put them very, very far apart in my grand map of programming languages; they take one step together, the first lambda calculus step, and then immediately begin sprinting in opposite directions.)
Startup Battlefield: The Final 7 Make Their Closing Arguments
I consider myself to be a good writer. I don't see how post-secondary English education would improve my writing at all. Also, I don't think that documenting code requires the same skill set as writing a poem, novel, or even an essay. Perhaps a course in Technical Writing would directly apply to code documentation, but even the glimpses of those courses I've had didn't seem relevant to software development beyond the obvious admonitions to be clear, concise, etc.

I've known many English majors and graduate students, and I have never gotten the impression that the discipline is focused on communication.
I doubt this man spent time to produce the sculpture -- remember his full time job is scamming, there is probably not much time left for sculpture. Scamming is quite profitable and labor in Nigeria is probably fairly cheap, so if I had to guess, he probably payed someone else to do the work.
Boned? We're adults here; you can say fucked.
We might have been able to get away with raw SQL, but because of some of the complexities and dependencies on this same code, I felt like it wasn't the prudent choice during a fire. I wouldn't have had time to properly test it.

As for moving the inserts to an async job, that was one of our thoughts, too. Really it's what we did, but we just have the intermediary step of MongoDB. We wanted that step (rather than just immediately returning to the user and having the client not know when the inserts actually occur) because we wanted to keep the user experience great. Our app immediately sends you to personalized recs. We didn't want the initial experience to be: open the app => sent to a blank page of "recommendations."

An async job that didn't wait for any sort of confirmation would have left us in this position (or we would have had to implement a poller to check if the inserts were complete, which seemed wasteful and would need a push to Android Market which seemed less feasible.)
I've found this to be true. Firefox is very, very popular in the Philippines on all those pirated WinXPsp3 boxes.
Predictions anyone? lol
Bad example. Jaiku was bought by Google. Twitter keeps getting VC money, but hasn't gone liquid/profitable yet.
If you don't think that how buildings use water isn't going to be ridiculously important in the next hundred years of human expansion, you've got some reading to do.

Lives might actually be at stake. Livelihoods almost certainly will.
Before you start, look at the work Azul is doing in this area.
Except in dzone. Almost all java-related submissions get high upvotes.
Also, a bunch of resources I found useful:

http://treetop.rubyforge.org/

http://www.complang.org/ragel/

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

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

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

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

http://www.hokstad.com/writing-a-compiler-in-ruby-bottom-up-...
Experienced Rails devs in the US generally bill $100+/hr; similar for .NET contractors. I don't have a ton of pricing experience with anything else.
Creating colorschemes for Vim
(As did, to a degree, the conclusion of Ender's Game.)
What Will The Internet Look Like In 10 Years?
lets not turn this into a women in tech issue
They did move their writes to an async job. They write the apps list into mongodb, then a daemon later copies it into mysql. Mongodb is being used as a cache (the frontend queries mongo then mysql)... this way they can read the data while also throttling writes to their main db.
Feedback on tactile UIkits
Hello all, I just finished developing a tactile Uikit development product to help App heads be more productive and have fun brainstorming and mocking up App ideas, and would love to get your feedback.
www.uikits.com
I just hope that resting your wrists while typing won't make you drop the connection...
after working behind a computer all day, walking the dog is a great way to unwind. sometimes, i ride my bike. getting a drink with friends is good too.
Well packaged self promotion
Play poker, masturbate, play with my cat.

Not at the same time.
I read books, mostly sci fi and stuff like that but also humor horror and other genres. Books are wonderful and when you read right before bed you can really tell when you are tired (which is vastly different if you are watching T.V. or other more passive things), I guess after a while your imagination just stops working.

I probably spend most of my personal free time reading books and they are great for me to wind down.
Funny, in contrast I almost always appreciate seeing stories like this, if only because they're good reminders of attribution bias.

Many of the startup entrepreneurs I know spend an unfortunate amount of emotional energy beating up on themselves for not having created Facebook/Twitter/name-your-favorite-uber-success-story here.

It's good to be regularly reminded that smarts and incredible work ethic are necessary but not sufficient for that kind of epic-level startup success.
My first job out of college was in Stuttgart, Germany. The boss apologized in the orientation meeting that as a small company, they could only provide 28 paid days of vacation.

He wasn't sure why I was laughing.
Hmm. I wonder why I've never heard an offer like this end with "I'll give you 51% of the business since I know you'll be doing most of the work but its such a great idea I just want to be part of building it."

That's about the only way I'd ever take one of these seriously. Kudos on offering 49% though. Usually, its more like 10%.

I don't mean to sound off-putting, but this is like showing up at an archery competition, finding a good archer and asking if he'll let you tell him to shoot at the bulls-eye in exchange for more than half of the winnings.
Do people really go into web design to get "fuck you" money?
Also worth mentioning that the image name / url isn't enterly random - it contains the profile ID of the owner. This means the reverse situation to the one mentioned in the OP is possible, where a linked photo can be traced back to the person's profile.

This is pretty well known but I havn't seen it mentioned in this thread yet.
The eternal antitrust case: Microsoft versus the world
Backed up by what evidence? And by arbitrary code do you mean code that embraces mutability?
Even businesses that made money with Groupon hesitant to try again
Germany is the long-established engineering culture, building on the old guild system of craftsmen. (Which still exist - the craftsmen's guilds, I mean. You aren't allowed to fix musical instruments until you've gone through your apprenticeship and journeyman's year.)
> I have the ideas, the marketing tactics, and all the data and statistics needed to make this site a complete success.

You haven't given a definition for success. Does success mean that the site generates enough money to sustain itself? Will all parties involved be able to retire off of the revenue generated? Or does success simply mean that it will be useful to its users?
That's fine, but I (a hypothetical web designer) am selecting for clients who don't actually care to do IE6 compatibility work, but would try to get it if it were the same price.
Covert livestream leads to suicide
If you put a bunch of monkeys in an ecodome with barely enough bananas to sustain but plenty of jalepenos, how many generations do you have to wait until they pick the lock and break out?
-critical music listening (some decent hi-fi speakers/headphones required)

-meditating/deliberate breathing

-static/dynamic apnea free diving (need access to body of water)
Yeah. They also have a working health care system, excellent public transit so no matter where you live you don't need a car, and so on. Clothing is insanely expensive. Food is more expensive if you're on a ramen diet, less expensive if you eat produce or bread and good deli meats.

Quality of life is higher no matter what you earn. Germany is set up so you can enjoy your days and your life.
Did Peter Thiel Make The Single Best Investment In History?
"We couldn't figure out a Microsofty-enough way to do websockets"
Undertake a small 'home-improvement' task that takes no more than an hour or two. After spending so much time in computer systems solving problems, fixing a real-life bug or enhancement in my flat is strangely satisfying.

e.g.

- finally get that TV/DVD/Stereo setup the right way;
- replace the dodgy doorbell
- throw out old crap
- repaint a room (if you make a mistake, just paint over it)

(edit:formatting)
Yeah, there's no "true programmers", and you're probably going to get fleeced if you try to hire one without some serious capital that isn't your own (read: investors who don't expect the money back).

How exactly did you go about learning to code?
Mine was built in 1885, but we're not typical, tptacek.
Joe Forgas at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has shown that positive moods can make us more gullible, less able to develop persuasive arguments, and more likely to make careless decisions. This has led Robert Cummins of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, among others, to argue that there is an optimum level of life satisfaction - around 7 or 8 out of 10 on the standard scale - at which we flourish.

That's the "not too much" reasoning. The article also confuses visceral (in the moment) happiness with reflective (how do I feel about my life) happiness which is annoyingly common in articles about happiness.