skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good design is a combination of several different skills. The most important are: composition and typography. Composition is the arrangement elements on the page, while typography is self-explanatory. There is also the matter of illustration, which often comes into play, and can include drawing, technical illustration, and photoshopping. Start by getting some pro design software: Quark, (or Indesign) Illustrator, and Photoshop, if you don't have them already.

Initial exercises: Try to re-create a page from a book or a magazine in Quark; try to re-create a logo or illustration in Illustrator; and try editing some photos in Photoshop.

There is no shortcut: all of this is hard work and will take years to learn.

If you want ONE book that has the absolute highest ratio of useful information to page length, the book you need is "Logo, Font, and Lettering Bible" by Leslie Cabarga. If you get that book, you will also want a copy of Fontographer.
Well, at least one investor seems to have accidentally included himself in the mess (from TC's comments)

http://twitter.com/speechu/status/25083299594
It would be viable as an app if it abstracted away the 140 character limit of sms. I don't think people are going to be willing to deal with the annoyance of sending emails as multiple sms messages
But the conversation has evolved to the point where these super angels are actually colluding (and I don’t use that word lightly) to solve a number of problems, say multiple sources who are part of the group and were at the dinner.

Given Arrington's allegations, why would someone in the group or at the dinner admit to the collusion? These are smart guys talking to a prolific, ballsy blogger--what do they expect will happen? What's in it for them?

At least two people attending were extremely uneasy about the meetings, and have said that they are only there to gather information, not participate.

It also strikes me as odd how specific he is when mentioning figures. Why not simply say, "Several people who attended the meeting..."? By specifically saying that there were two, he will have everybody who was there guessing who those two are. Also, if there was just one person, it would make sense for him to specify that there were two to throw off the rest of the group, no?
K5 needed more user generated content. Metafilter posts are links strung together. They are easier to do.

Another thing that probably drove the decline of K5 was the rise of blogs for everyone. Why post at K5 when some bunch of goons could remove what you regard as worth publishing while on your own blog it went live always?
er, because he wants to maintain relationships with his friends who were around the table?
It seems that he only delivers to people in the Lower East Side for now. Of course, food delivery has operated on a limited geography basis since...well pretty much since its inception.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last we hear of this story; very unlikely Arrington will name drop in the future. However, if this story is true, hopefully it scares off these Angels from forming an investment 'mafia.'
It's still like that in all BSDs.
Would it still be price fixing if all of them got up from the table and announced the formation of Super Angel Capital Partners? I can't see how; there's tons of VC firms already. If that's not unlawful, how is a joint venture among them unlawful?

Are we just stuck on the fact that they're "angel investors"? The law doesn't recognize any such sector of the venture capital business.
Because Dave, Ron, Jeff, Mike, Josh and Chris would have a defamation suit filed by end-of-day. Clearly MA reached out to the attendees.. I wonder what the other 8 or 9 had to say. That's the other half of the story.
I like it too. With XeTeX and good quality typefaces, it does an excellent job.
Or, this is a group of people collaborating to generate the best possible outcome for their own business. Every joint venture can be framed in anticompetitive terms. But in this case, what possible undue market influence can they have? The market will find other people to take these deals.
Buying stock is also just investing. So is providing a loan. That doesn't mean those activities aren't subject to laws and regulations.
IANAL, but as I understand it...

Any time individuals or businesses get together to collaborate on a strategy that restrains trade or supply, thus artificially skewing prices, this runs afoul of antitrust law.

Collusion between angels to keep valuations low and prevent newcomers from participating sounds like a textbook case. In this case, they're artificially inflating their cost of capital by reducing the overall valuations of the businesses they fund. They artificially reduce the supply of capital by conspiring to keep out new participants.

Similarly, the Department of Justice is looking into Valley hiring, since companies have a gentlemen's agreement not to poach from one another:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/09/17/technology-special...

In this case, the argument would go that the companies are artificially constraining the supply of paying work for qualified applicants, while reducing the competitive landscape that would drive up their salaries.
Political decisions matter in State Economic Performance
I just put "forming a cartel" on my list of things not to tweet.
With food in particular there aren't actually that many places in the western world where you can legally run an unlicensed/uninspected operation at significant scale. People think of Texas, for example, as a libertarian-leaning state, but it's actually completely illegal in TX to sell home-prepared food, even at church bake sales (though in practice it's not enforced for small-scale charity bake sales). There are a handful of states that have recently passed "cottage food laws" that allow people to sell home-baked goods in certain categories below a certain volume, so e.g. it's now legal in Ohio to sell modest amounts of cupcakes and cookies and whatever. But not that many, and most don't cover food outside of baked goods and perhaps some kinds of home preserves (marmalades and similar).
As we just saw with TechCrunch v FusionGarage, the paper contract has little to do with whether something is or isn't a joint venture.

Broaden the word "antitrust" to "laws against all contracts in restraint of trade", and re-ask the question to yourself. These people are investors. Investors are allowed to work together, aren't they?
Was it the Adam Smith quote "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public."

Why do I know that off the top of my head? Civ IV... who says games can't be educational?
If they create a single super angel corporation then they could run afoul of anti-monopoly laws.
Does culture affect long-run growth?
If the FTC determines that the joint venture would form a monopoly, they could in fact block it on antitrust grounds. The FTC blocks mergers all the time.

Explicit cooperation in restraint of trade is always illegal, though.
MATLAB built for Speed:  Jacket SGEMM tops 700 GFLOPS on the GPU
What? No they don't. There's no such thing as a "monopoly of angel investors". There are as many angel investors as there are people with extra money to invest. In a lot of cases already, groups of powerful people with extra money to invest have already formed very famous companies to do exactly what we're talking about!

Shouldn't the DoJ be going after Kleiner and Sequoia first?

Don't hundreds of doctors and dentists already do stuff like this?
I have no idea whether this specific arrangement is legal or falls under laws regulating price fixing but it is fundamentally different from a JV - there is transparency in the case of a JV so someone looking for financing knows they are dealing with the same entity. If it was the same thing as a JV, parties doing the collusion wouldn't bother to do it in secret.
Nice work — unfortunately full screen fails to work on Safari 5 for me =(

this.video.webkitEnterFullScreen() causes the following error: INVALID_STATE_ERR: DOM Exception 11: An attempt was made to use an object that is not, or is no longer, usable.
10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazons Mechanical Turk
To be fair, this is Michael Arrington. He's not above sensationalism to get a few extra clicks.
Examining Drug Use Surveys and Statistics
I'm not going to disagree with that. As I said, I hope this is a mistake.
Game theory. 10 players make for a highly unstable equilibrium, especially given the potential for absurdly high profits for deviating to fund one hot company. One of them is even "highly uncomfortable." The key is to shop around and negotiate intelligently.
As a further improvement it should be "Go to my profile: click here".
In Python.
Every time I set up a server with yum I have to look up how to install development tools, groupinstall just doesn't really click with me.

Pacman and apt are both better imo, and apt-get build-dep is really great when you need to do a source install but can still use normal dependencies.

(I do use aptitude now instead of apt though)
This thread officially needs a 'grellas bat-signal.
In April 2009, at a frat party, this guy asked to use my iPhone to make a call. I had seen him at a different party the previous summer, so I let him use it. He walked away with my phone.

He taunted me over the phone when I called and asked to have it back. I updated my Facebook to relate that my phone was stolen; he logged in via iPhone and updated "nvm got my phone back." A real class act.

I remembered his name was "Chase" and he was into music, so I looked through MySpace for all the guys named Chase in Chicago. Through that, I found his Twitter account and sent him an @reply indicating that I filed a police report and would have him arrested at his next gig. A few minutes later he started the trip back to Hyde Park and returned the phone to me.
Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in "Online Infringement" Bill
as asr points out, hooray for Civ IV!

http://www.squidoo.com/civ4quotes

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public."

- Adam Smith
Not all gun owners are hunters in the sense you mean here. Drive out west, particularly on secondary roads, and you will see road signs used as target practice.
Dissastisfied, Some Wall Street Technologists Flee for Start-Up Life
I'm thankful he took the time to learn english and wrote this post in english, because lord knows I have not bothered to learn HIS language, and would not be able to read it if he hadn't.

So, a few turns of phrase, or whatever, who cares? I understood it, and I was able to understand it because HE is not as LAZY as I AM! (and went out and learned english.)
That's interesting. I was wondering about this in the context of a site like etsy where there are dozens of people selling baked goods over the internet.
Tech Has No Feelings: Gary Vaynerchuk Crushes Old Media
So a blogger gets a tip from a source, knows the people involved, acts on it and smells a rat. He sticks around and talks to a few people he knows, makes a few calls and gets a breaking story.

Sounds to me like bloggers are the new journalists and that traditional media is in big big trouble.
> That said, please don't make excuses about how little time you spent on it. It might be true, but it shows lack of respect for your audience.

antirez's readership probably overlaps significantly with his userbase.

For purely selfish reasons, I wholeheartedly commend and encourage his goal of spending less time writing blog posts. :)
Agreed, 100% There are tons of APIs now available for email delivery, billing, etc.

Great job with this!
Greenspan's very first post to HN over three years ago was a shorter version of this same lament:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24742

It makes no more sense today.
Why would VC firms meeting and agreeing to change terms for their clients in lock-step not be collusion whereas if the brick and mortar banks did, it would be? (and was: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/04/did-banks-collu.html)
if one is so incompetent that his page is not available without the "www."

Does this level of competence require that all services be provided on the root domain or just HTTP?
So this is why the sleep[1] function from Python accepts floating point numbers: to avoid any future bike shedding.

[1] http://docs.python.org/library/time.html#time.sleep
Why, I do believe my beloved alma mater has been slandered! I need to recruit Buchheit and Eric Meyer and the ghost of A.A. Michaelson and Donald freaking Knuth and come kick your butt! ;)

No, seriously: It doesn't matter. People manage to succeed with pitiful little CWRU degrees like my own. And, obviously, many of the most successful people in the industry never went to college at all.

I have heard the occasional rumor that Google is obsessed with academic credentials. If true, that is more of a problem for them than for you.
Really interesting collection of cool things you can do with Cellular Automata. I've implemented a few of the automata in the book for fun (they're all pretty simple), but I've yet to find a real-world use for any of it.

If you don't take the "this will change the world and is the most important thing since math was invented" tone too seriously, it's pretty entertaining. And who's to say, it might turn into a revolution. Certainly the ideas about complexity theory he puts forth are interesting and worth thinking about.

If I had to boil it down, it would be "Any system is either trivially simplistic, or complex enough to do anything." Think logic gates built with conway's game of life, or adders built with dwarf fortress pumps, that kind of thing. He's trying to unify all complex systems with cellular automata.

That's my take on it, at least. Read it a while ago. If you're interested in cellular automata or complexity, it's worth reading.

This would be really cool on the ipad if the illustrations were interactive, kind of like the NKS Explorer PC app he released a few years ago. That was a fun tool to play with this stuff.
I spend around $40-$50 extra a month for unlimited email access when I already receive free text messages.

i think for the vast majority of users, it's the complete opposite. free email through something like gmail, and a 200-500 sms/month plan.

what are you using that costs $40-50 a month for email? i provide secure imap service for my business customers and occasionally get complaints that $15/month per mailbox is too expensive.
To walk away when I knew my heart wasn't in it but my partners wanted to continue. It wasn't easy because we were barely profitable, it was easy because I respected my partners. They continued to make a modest go of it for many years afterwards.
"Would it still be price fixing if all of them got up from the table and announced the formation of Super Angel Capital Partners?"

Yes. That would effectively make SACP a cartel. Price fixing is price fixing if it was done by a group of entities or one entity.
Actually, I've been trying to write a little bit about this here: http://www.resultsjunkies.com/blog/category/back-office-expo...

HTH!
That's an unrealistically high standard and I can't think of any recent case which would meet it. Why didn't the market find a solution to Microsoft in the 90's or Intel in 2000's and, more importantly, why did the Feds feel the need to intervene?
Not really. And he means 'metrics' not 'meters'.
You can understand it, sure, with a bit of effort. But 'correct' it isn't.

Anyway, my point is not to send the guy to study English instead of doing whatever it is he prefers doing. But if you write in public, just get some help proofreading. Despite what the other defensive people on this thread are saying, good, clear communication matters and helps.
Hah, this made me laugh. As if they owe anybody anything! They're the ones taking the risks with their own money; if they want to be better informed through information sharing, more power to them.
Once again I am forced to golf clap for a horrifying idea brilliantly executed.
I'm assuming he's trying to both get a good scoop AND stop the damage these angels can do to startups - the longer he waits, the more damage might be done.

I think he's struck a pretty good balance here by saying what needs to be said and no more, while still keeping it interesting.
Lets file a class action lawsuit naming the top ten (virtually 100% eh?) super angels then call Michael as a witness. The case is simple: price fixing led to lower sized deals and higher valuations.

I almost never advocate lawsuits, but in this case it is totally justifiable. Just for the record, I'm actually not against collusion and price fixing as an idea (I believe that eventually market forces will correct it), but I'm against it if it is illegal because the market should be able to trust that laws are enforced.

Sue the bastards for billions worth of equity.
I think your statement was clear. However, I find it hard to believe Arrington would put some of his best sources at risk if his claims were completely unfounded.
A reputable site I use regularly (like Amazon), will have my card on file. Otherwise, if a site offers PayPal, I will use that over putting my credit card in.
I forgot whose online LaTeX CV template I used to create my own resume, but it was very nice and helpful for a TeX noob like myself, better looking than this one. This is what mine looks like, with very minimal changes in layout/design compared the original: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37894947/Resume-of-Muhammed-Hoque
That's the one, thanks. Good old Civ :)
No kidding. I especially liked:

>Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out

and:

>Storing cookies in Web History (seriously. see FAQ)

Brilliant and EVIL. Wow.
I could have guessed that http://paulgraham.com/future.html would have scared quite a few traditional VCs. I'm surprised that it scares the big angels so much.
According to Wikipedia [1], there were over 250,000 angel investors active in 2007. If 10 of those investors were to get together to form a "super-group", I'm not sure it would match up with the definition of a monopoly.

I don't know anything about the collusion arguments though.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_investor
I don't know what law they broke (if any at all). I don't know if they can keep doing whatever they are doing.

I was just arguing against "legal to ... agree to merge and start a fund?", because yes, it would be legal.

You're saying they are one step of becoming something we all agree it's ok to do. But they haven't take this step.

Again, I'm not saying they're doing something illegal. Just that you can't apply the "joint-venture/company" operating rules for them, because this is not what they are.

Bringing "what if" conditions to a situation doesn't change it. You have to analyze for what it is.

Sorry if it looked like I disagree with you about the legality. I just didn't think you had a strong backup for the questions.
Seems like the brc meant "potted plant"
I'm not surprised by the accusation, but I have about as much trust in TechCrunch as I do in a general soothsayer
I found the footnotes, which are about as long as the text, to be a very interesting stand-alone read. Wolfram's self-congratulating doesn't bother me, although his work sometimes borders on confusing a posteriori computer models with reality. (Not that he's the only one who does that.) I highly recommend NKS.
Screwing over entrepreneurs on the seed stage is just evil. Gordon-Gekko-evil.
Smashing Magazine.
In Arrington's defense his claims are laid out clearly without any weasel words. Either this is happening or it isn't. So while I'm pretty meh about TC as a whole, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
That's just a recasting of "if you rigorously specify all of your assumptions in your unit tests, you needn't worry about anything". You can take maximal advantage of the type system to encode assumptions, but it's still on you to do it. This isn't a silver bullet that makes static typing better than dynamic typing, because nothing forces you to be competent about specifying your assumptions here, either.

You can take maximal advantage of the type system to specify as many assumptions as it can check or you can take maximal advantage of the unit tests to specify the same assumptions. You end up in the same place either way, and the OP's claim that you can "trust" the existence of passing type-checks without looking at the types to see what assumptions they encode in a way that you cannot trust unit tests doesn't hold up.
I think Wolfram is onto something. He may have an ego the size of Texas, but my intuition tells me that it really is a new kind of science. I also think it might be 50 years or more before the mainstream community acknowledges it.
I pay $40-$50 per month to allow internet usage on my Blackberry which is required to receive the blackberry email feed from my gmail account.
Microsoft owned the entire personal computing platform and was using it to put new companies in marginally related markets out of business.

Are you suggesting that 10 angel investors have control over all the money? Is one of them Lex Luthor?
I'm thinking it will send subject line of 4 or 5 recent email messages - each message has an idea #, text that id # back to the server, and it gives you the first 140, text back read more, and it texts back another 140 - would this solve it?
Sure hope everyone got that css history hack fix.
Before I turn into "the guy on the thread arguing that the Evil Angels are just peachy", banding together for the sole purpose of pushing back YC and making life harder for founder is a total dick move, and I'm happy Arrington is shaming them for it.

But it is a much more ambitious claim to say that they're breaking federal laws by doing it.
I bet that one uncomfortable person is also the wealthiest. Greed will never allow investing to become anything close to a cartel.
Obviously, this came out an hour ago because Arrington (despite being a trained lawyer himself) spent the day and maybe last night also (knowing him) checking with lawyers about what to write, how to write it, when to release it, etc. Good luck on the witness stand Michael!
"As if they owe anybody anything! They're the ones taking the risks with their own money;"

Right. And I'm sure they're all doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. They're definitely not intending to make money off of the deal.

Regardless, Arrington accuses them of discussing:

* How the group can act together to keep traditional venture capitalists out of deals entirely

* How the group can act together to keep out new angel investors invading the market and driving up valuations.

This is definitely sounds anti-competitive to me (assuming it's true of course).
If someone fathered a kid and didn't spend time with the child, I would place blame.

I suspect we might just have different values here. I was taught at an early age that if you have a kid, you absolutely must take responsibility. If you cannot handle having a kid, simply do not impregnate.
I wrote a similar piece of code way back in high school, based on Paul Graham's "The Roots of Lisp" essay. I didn't know any better, so I used C/C++. Don't think I've ever learned more in a single programming project.
No, a plant in a pot. Not some pot, well, growing in a pot. It was (still is) a Jasmine plant, grown from a cutting taken off some beautiful old gardens that got cleared away in a development.