skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is an excellent post, and a very timely one with The Social Network coming out. The film certainly glamorizes startup life, and makes it seem like you won't fail.

I released my iPhone app this Summer (SeizeTheDay, http://seizethedayapp.com). I'm in school at Ohio State for my senior year. We got featured on the App Store, and received app of the week from Time and CNET. This has put us around 100k downloads in the first couple of months. While in SF this Summer, I received a lot of advice to drop out and blow it up. I disagree significantly. College is fun, and the idea is that it's something I can do on the side while I'm in school.

I'm currently making somewhere between beer money and a salary from iAds (will probably post some data on this at some point when we have more data available). I figure if I can grow revenue to about 4x what we're currently doing, I can afford to dive in full time. This gives me 9 months of school to keep working on the side, and see if it's realistic when I graduate.

We put about $800 of investment into it, and our only recurring cost is Apple's dev license ($100/year). While not every startup can operate this way, I feel this is the way to do it. Our model lends itself pretty well to tackling a small problem and growing slowly.
It's interesting that HN is developing an anti-drop-out-of-school mentality. It's been fun to watch it manifest itself.

People probably do it through a combination of "I don't want to be partially responsible for screwing with a kid's life" and "if they get discouraged from starting a startup, they weren't meant to anyway".

That said, it's kind of silly that your insightful (and true) comment is being set upon by those types of people.
I may smack the next journalist that uses the -gate suffix in a title.
There's just 2 problems with Vivek's position -

a) Cost - In today's economic climate, I simply cannot justify an education that, on avg, costs over $100K. Especially when student loans are involved.

b) Time - 4 yrs is an unnecessarily long amount of time for a bachelors degree, not to mention another 1-2 yrs for a masters. The opportunity cost of this time only compounds the first problem.

Edit: Sorry, I should have been more clear. In terms of cost, I meant that there's an institutional problem within the American education system that allows for such skyhigh tuition rates.

The same reasoning applies to time. Sure, students can ramp up their classes and finish a 4 yr degree in 3 yrs, but why should they have to? Why not make it 2-3 yrs to begin with? This can easily be done by making non-relevant classes optional instead of core for a given major (for example, I had to take a course in art as part of my biology major).
That chart is stupidly loaded.
How about the figures for startups with founders that didn't graduate from the Ivy League?
I did this and I can contribute most of my hair loss for dealing with clients while in school.

At some points I could not distinguish what were my priorities and you need a strong support system around you to keep you a float, mentally.

It's an exhausting and distracting proposition, so don't take it lightly or do. Whichever works best.
I've been using your app for the last couple of weeks. I think it's the best tasks app on the iPhone at this point, really well thought out and easy to use. Any plans to offer an in-app upgrade to disable ads?
Coming next week :)
Though graphic design surely includes all those things you've mentioned, I was using it in the sense that most "web designers" might use it, as in the ability to make pretty stuff in photoshop. I'm not sure that someone who can, for instance apply Tufte's advice on data representation, necessarily also makes nice looking logos.
Glad I'm not the only one that's nervous.
What sport(s) should my 6-yr-old son play?
Disagree completely. I only have about 50 college credits and have no plans to finish. I've also lived pretty much all over the United States and there really isn't much of a stigma... certainly not from my friends and family.

Large companies and universities might have to make special arrangements for you to be on the right "career track", but that's about it (and they will do that, I have personal experience with a University inventing a new position for me).
Ping is not US only. I have a Canadian iTunes account and had no problem creating a ping account.
TinEye (http://www.tineye.com): a 'reverse image search'. You upload or link to an image and it finds you other copies of that image on the web. This is something you absolutely can't do via google, and is surprisingly useful, for example to find uncropped or pre-photoshopped copies of images.
By the way, should you find yourself in that situation (in a car), don't drive away -- rev the engine as loudly as you can and try not to soil yourself.

I was thinking more like Browning M2 or Oerlikon 20mm with a cut down barrel. Bofors 40mm is probably a bit much, but I wouldn't want to ignore Ruark's "use enough gun" dictum.
Then IMO you're in the small percentage of people who are motivated enough, talented enough and have the discipline to go and get what they want. Most people need to be taught that.
Our client required ISO 27001 certification, we have to give them that one.
I would agree if your users are not college educated. Otherwise, I don't see it.

Anyhow, life is more than just catering to user "wants". Yes, college is mostly seen as a gateway to a profession, but you can get much more than job skills out of the experience.
Accused bigamist snared on Facebook
Oh, how much different life would be if I were in the US. I'm a University Student in Australia, and 1 year in Stanford is literally equivalent to 4 years in Melbourne University (say $40,000/year for stanford vs the $5,000/year I pay now). Not to mention that my education is on an interest-free government loan.

I can see why it's so appealing for a University student to want to drop out solely because of the cost. We all have to admit that University can't possibly cover all bases and teach one how to build a business and product. We also have to admit that University provides some very valuable connections, knowledge and perspectives for those who are there.

Hence, to me, it's a question of relative value.

That aside, it then again depends on the type of career path you want to take down the road. If you're in the software world, I guess you can say that building a software product is something that you can do without University. Or put slightly different, University won't make you a better programmer.

Merit in our world is won by building the better hack. However, I've got friends in accounting and finance who have leveraged the crap out of the exposure opportunities at University. I'm sure many of them will land high-paying jobs in the future.

Bottom line is to know your system and thrive.

I sorta dislike the way Vivek tries to push statistics of startup founders as a justification for a college education. Statistics show the current state of affairs, but they don't necessarily link to the point that he is trying to make.

Basically, what he says is that one should learn the ropes by working for some large companies, or even at a startup. The assumption there is that you need a degree to work at a company to gain experience, which again, varies by field (accountants better have a degree, coders at a startup, maybe not).

That said, I agree with his evaluations on the merits of a college education. It would also be stupid to admit that a college degree doesn't confer a certain level of credibility; I'm sure that those with a degree will find it easier to get their foot in the door at large companies.

After all of that, the questions I still think needs to be answered first and foremost is: What does it cost? Am I ready to bear that cost?
Which is fine if you're comfortable compiling from source or installing packages manually.

My point is that on OSX or Windows, installing an application from "upstream", like getting the latest Firefox from Mozilla.org for example, is something even relatively non-technical users can do by themselves. On a Linux desktop, it's a "here there be dragons" operation.

Not to mention that on Windows or OSX, a developer of a relatively small, obscure application (like say, HN favorite Bingo Card Creator) has a standard, relatively easy way to package their application up for installation by end users.

On a Linux desktop that's really damn difficult for both the developer and the end user.
America is a young country. I think that contributes to how short-sighted Americans can be about some things. And America is essentially the "alpha male" of the world, so a lot of what gets done here gets exported, for better or worse. America tends to see new technologies as "better" across the board. In some cases, there is merit to that idea. (I am thinking of how popular cell phones are in some parts of the world, like China, where they have no plans to try to play catch-up with putting in landlines.) But, in other cases, it clearly misses the mark.
How much do you think they can tell you without revealing the signals they use to determine relevancy?

The fact is their current policy is in all likelihood the one that allows them to serve relevant results to the greatest number of people for the lowest cost. If they start giving it the personal touch as you say then the cost will go way up it won't bed just you and the occasional accidental delisted site owner but will be every spammer, con artist, and fly by night SEO expert. The support costs would be astronomical. And your hoped for solution is to have a government entity step in and mandate they spend that money in a hopeless attempt to let you talk to someone in person? In short you want the government to force Google to reduce its profits, potentially drastically, for your own personal benefit.
> There is a huge nuance in what you just said. Folks, the markets are complicated. There are a ton of rules. Make sure you understand them if you want to play this game.

Having built systems that traded quadrillions in notional value (and in the process made a small percentage of that in profit), I think I have an idea what I'm talking about and how to play this game.

Everything you said is true in theory, except practice is quite a bit different:

ETrade will flash your order in order to get a better price; and one second later, will go to the NBBO. But some of the players they flash to will go and BUY the NBBO within that second. So when ETrade, after not having able to improve your price, goes to the NBBO, they found they can no longer fill at the price that was available just a second ago. That's unfair advantage for the flasher -- a second ago, the ask was at 10.02 and bid was 10.01, which means the fair price is somewhere in between, but definitely not more than 10.02; Now, the flasher knows there's a buyer at 10.02 -- so they buy it themselves at 10.02 and offer to sell at 10.03; In many cases, the buyer will still want to buy, making the flasher a profit of 0.01; In the worst case, the flasher can offer it again at 10.02, paying only commission on his failed trade, and is likely to sell to the same buyer.

I know of institutions who actually made money that way, lots of it, with ridiculously low risk. And it's legal, because the broker is allowed to flash the order to anyone they want for one second before going to the NBBO, and the flasher has no commitment not to abuse that.

> Go read about the national market system. Go read the old rules about flash orders and price improvement. Then reconsider what you've just typed.

The NBBO system is broken and has been for years. The flashing technique I highlighted above is one example. During the flash crash of may 6, the CQS (and NBBO) was 20 seconds delayed, meaning you couldn't fill at the NBBO prices.
Wait....you pass-through your users' ads (from their blogs).. too bad you cannot get any of that ad-sense revenue (if there is anyway).

biz opp right there if you can attract more money-making bloggers
So... get it done in 3. I know many people who did, and still managed to work their way through school without loans or with minimal loans.

3 years at NC State would cost you about $50k. Save up beforehand, work during school - it's doable. Hard, but doable.

Looking at Oakland (Michigan), where I went, it's now about $10k/year - 3 years accelerated would be under $40k FWICT.

Yes, that's not peanuts, but it's not the end of the world. Scholarships/grants/working during school - it's all doable.

I'm still shocked to find people getting in to 6 figure debt for college degrees. I just don't see the payback in most cases, and likely neither will those students. :/
What to build on shout.com?
what would be a simple, scalable site on build on shout.com ?
I can kind of see the cost point - though most would argue that the lifetime earnings of someone with a college degree far outweigh a $100K investment.

But the time thing kind of bugs me. As driven as HN is this may be a minority position but I really don't believe you should be working (in a 9-5 career style job) between 18-24. I really don't care so much abou t college, but have fun, go out, date guys and girls, travel, there are so many things you should be doing at that age then starting a business and you'll end up better for it.

I didn't start my career until my late 20s and I don't regret that at all.
I use Google for finding most pages with information on Wikipiedia, and I am a Wikipedia editor who has read three whole books about how to use Wikipedia. Wikipedia's search usability is a disaster compared to using Google to search for Wikipedia pages.
This is interesting though, Newegg has to change the standard search box to something more guided to be useful. I think most sites have too little content for a visitor to find anything useful with a search box. In these cases a directory or tag system is a much better solution. Some exceptions to this are web applications where users are looking up content they created on their own.
He doesn't seem to realize that you can learn all those things they teach you in business school (finance, marketing, corporate law) as you go if you're a real entrepreneur. Sure, you might make a few mistakes early on, but there's no better way to learn.
I went back to finish by degree after a few years in the work force and while it has been tough it's definitely been rewarding.

It certainly hasn't stopped me pursuing the startup life and over the last three years I've worked on a bunch of startup projects with varying degrees of success.

Being a university student meant that I could open doors not normally open to me, getting access to mentors and market data that I wouldn't have if I was out in the open. It also meant that while I was switching between startups I could get away without being seen as flaky as I was still "just" a university student.

I'm now in a profitable startup that is growing incredibly fast but still studying, hoping to graduate in the middle of next year. People around me have said "why finish? surely you've proved you don't need university by now?" but from where I'm standing I have to finish.

I used to say "if I get to x revenue or if y deal happens then I'll drop out". But having hit a couple of those milestones I'm still there - I need to prove to myself that I can finish this.
The fluid movement + ghosting is well done. There are the beginnings of a pleasant interface here.

One issue: I couldn't figure out how to connect two nodes to make loops. Adding and deleting worked just find-- but not connecting existing elements.
Solid list.

Personally, I spend a great deal of time putting myself in the mind of the user, trying to figure out how we as humans visualize things and simplifying the actual underlying task at hand.

The list you summed up does work for 95% of all cases - especially if you're just thinking about a "website". However when you're trying to create something new or working with some new concepts you have to imagine how the user pictures things so that it matches his thought pattern as much as possible.

This also includes placing things were the user is most likely to look for them etc.
Lessons Learned from the Firestorm of Controversy
What Are Botnets, Types, working, example, full explanation
I prefer the first one because it gets to the point a hell of a lot faster.

The second one is not without its charms, but it doesn't seem like pitch material to me.
There's a difference between the stated purpose of flashing, and how it is used in practice.

> Flash orders give some 3rd party the opportunity to fill your order.

Alternative way to look at it: Flashing advertises your order to several parties, and gives them one full second to front run you at ARCA, where the best price currently is. (Oh, and they have the option to fill it directly at ARCAs price immediately).

> If they decline, your order is routed to ARCA where it is filled at $50.01 (and ARCA receives the commission), and you pay a routing fee.

Except, one of the guys the order was flashed to, (who declined) has already bought that 50.01 at ARCA, so now the NBBO price is 50.02; incidentally, by a pure coincidence, it's being sold by the same guy who just bought it 50.01.

I've played the HFT game for the last 10 years. Don't believe a single word of the official propaganda about why something is employed; It's all there to generate more traffic for the exchanges; e.g., in the case described above, ARCA gets two transaction fees instead of one, and the broker gets their routing fee AND some kickback from the flashee.
Well I asked around and I guess you're right. So I guess I'm going to learn more from this "alien" encounter than you are :-)

Two different but related issues: me, and what I think (thought) of other people.

I'm not very social, myself. I've occasionally wished I were more social, but it's generic loneliness. I've never personally been in a situation where I seriously-in-real-life tried to get or have sex. I've got my fair share of fantasies (small ones and big ones) and wishful thinking etc. It's just that I planned not to have sex in college. It's entirely down to how I was raised - I have religious (Protestant) reasons for believing sex is a bigger deal than most people think. But that's literally my only reason for not wanting to have sex.

That said, I totally see where people are coming from with wanting to have sex! I saw and heard a lot of flirting in college. I guess I just assumed it was less common for all the social and personal issues to be resolved. Being unsocial, I guess I just wasn't paying attention. Time to go update my view of reality again. (I'm only 24, so I'm used to it :-)
It's funny, because even people like Zuckerberg eventually had to pull in experts with extensive educational backgrounds to help in developing the company. And if you look at any billion dollar company, those with degrees have played and continue to play a critical role in said company's growth and success. While I do agree that with a field like computer science, real world experience rather than educational background may be far more valuable (read: Diaspora), I hope this mentality is limited to those within that demographic. This certainly does not apply to people pursuing medicine, law, finance, etc. Some of the comments go so far as to claim that higher education is this era's biggest scam, which is an extremely ignorant view. I attend medical school currently, and am certain that the value I gain from the plethora of resources available, from discussing cases with professors to sticking my hands in a cadaver, is significantly more than that I'd get out of watching a few videos online, or taking some dissection tutorial. And these resources aren't free.
Obama’s Stimulus Plan Made Crisis Worse, Taleb Says
Looks nice, but the constant floating around and 'wiggling' really bugged me. It took me quite a while to figure out how to add and remove things.

It also reminded me of an ORM tool which I helped build in college called nORMa. It was a plugin for Visual Studio and was great for designing complex databases.

http://www.objectrolemodeling.com/AboutORM/ORMTools/NORMA/ta...
You did a real good job with both videos creative wise, and for video 1 sales wise. It was not what I was expecting, but the first class production definitely caught my attention, enough that number 1 would persuade me to want to find out more about the team and product.

I like video number 1 better. For me, the word choices of number 2 are not nearly as hard hitting as number 1. Also for number 2 the color and music seems less effective than number 1.

I think number 1 presents a definite "Google" feel to the presentation, and I think that is a positive for you guys.

If the presentation were being done only for me personally I would like 2 things to be altered.

1. Insert a quick opening from the company CEO showing the CEO, and saying "Hi I'm X, and we have developed this new product, and here it is, etc...".

2. Just a little slower presentation of each series of written words. Because for a new unknown product the features panned by just a little too quickly for me to get a good overview of exactly what the product does. Although number 1 seemed interesting enough to me to replay it to get the information I wanted from it.
I'd put the odds of this feature even being used by most web developers at about 10%. If no other browser supports it, what's the point?

It'd be much better if MS were to just take a page outline (from all the headlines) that were links and make their menu out of that. Or, look at the HTML5 <nav> elements. Then IE9 users might actually see it in use once in a blue moon.
One of the key things about UI design these days is that it's very easy to fall into the 'widget trap'. This is where you have some content you want to interact with, and instead of really analyzing what the best way to interact with it is, you just throw the data in a standard widget, like a listbox or textarea. It might be a really nice listbox or textarea, but there may also be a much better way of interacting with the content that wasn't explored. Widgets are the typical area where this happens, but it can be generalized to any situation where people just go with pre-established conveniences rather than try to find the best solution.
I was implying they were marking it up too much. I just wish someone would figure out a cheaper way to make 3D printers. Alas, I have no ideas.
Why did this get moderated down?

It's a serious point. The complaint isn't even a nitpick, it's covered. It's like saying every program has to define arithmetic if it's going to add two numbers together. No, it doesn't. That's the job of the processor.
The sad truth about Facebook
Man reaches astronauts with amateur radio
The better a student you are, and the better a school you go to, the more difference it will make. A Master's won't automatically get you more interesting + challenging jobs.
Don't beat people down. You only live once.