skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
First of all, WELCOME!

I don't profess to know a perfect path for you, but the basics for HN
are fairly simple, and they also apply to learning lingo and the areas
in which they are used (programming, marketing, seo, finance, ...).

0.) Read. You'll learn more by reading than posting.

1.) Be Nice (note: I'm not always nice)

2.) Answer Your Own Questions. If you try to answer your own questions,
you may or may not succeed, but at least you'll be far better prepared to
both ask better questions and better understand the answers. --You won't
get much out of an exchange unless you actually put something into it.

3.) Give Your Best Response. If you respond with an answer or even an
opinion, do the work necessary to provide supporting references. As you
can see, this is closely related to #2 in the sense of making the
homework a bit easier. I've actually seen (and even made) one-line
jokes, but the person who replied with a reference link was up-voted
more than the joke itself.

4.) Remain Positive. There will always be things you don't understand
being discussed, but believe in your own ability to understand them
through study and effort.

5.) The Jokes Actually Are Funny, Even If You Don't Get Them, And Even
If No References Are Given.

6.) Respect Decisions. Some people can not or will not give specifics of
their business ventures. It's their choice.

7.) Everyone Is Busy. If you submit a story or write a comment, consider
the time and effort of the reader will spend on it. The time invested is
multiplied by the number of readers, so your contribution should have
as much merit as possible. --You will both succeed and fail at this, (I
do) but the goal is to try your best.

8.) Read the "Guidelines" [1] and the "FAQ" [2]

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[2] http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
On Mac:

QtCore - 5.7 MB
QtGui - 24.4 MB
QtNetwork - 2.6 MB
QtSql - 0.5 MB

Not so gigantic by today's standards: 33.2 MB, 12 MB zipped.

For comparison, MacRuby.framework takes 51 MB, 17.3 zipped.

PS But, of course, it would be nice to have a static linking-friendly [free of charge] license.
I don't think this will be a boon to developers at all, because people like me won't be buying "apps" for a desktop environment. I want to use the full power of my computer and not have limited options.

Do you think people will be using iOS iWork on their desktops, for example?
I think that's good advice. I'm following it from the other side. I'm technical and learning sales/marketing so that I won't be clueless about that side.
If you've worked on several ventures, I would guess you're more determined than most of the population. Most people only talk or dream of actually working on projects, and never actually do anything with it.
Why would you ever want to openly admit you beat ie. cheated a system

Sometimes your audience is sympathetic because they perceive that the system you're beating is broken.

I read Victor Kiam's "autohagiography," and in it he recounts a story about how parking at a baseball game was impossible to get, but there was a special lot just for limos. So he grabs a peaked cap, puts on a dark suit, and drives his buddies to the game, right into the limo lot.

That (possibly apocryphal) anecdote is a perfect little story of ingenuity and hacking the system without confessing to moral corruption, more of a right the imbalance and tweak the nose of a big, unlikeable organization kind of thing.
In fact, you're right, it doesn't necessarily write a source file. I missed that last time when I looked. But Treetop will still create ruby code, write it into a string and then eval that. I didn't find that approach really elegant.
We use an Enterprise Search Platform (our biggest software acquisition) minus the support (another dumb idea). The entire thing is like a Black Box. It takes days to figure out what "Error: FS error" actually means. For a new project, we used Solr to maintain a smaller index and have never looked back since. Anybody about to start building a search index, Lucene/Solr is the way to go.
I don't want to discourage anyone, but you are practically distracting yourself from building a product by learning how to program. Getting really good at something takes many years of practice, and the program you write will likely be full of problems you are ill-equipped to fix.
Actually I did something like araneae stated, I started hiding my transcripts in high school and college to avoid drama between my folks because I was NOT a good student -- the formal education system wasn't for me. There was even one point in college where I was failing out, but gamed the GPA system so that they couldn't kick me out.

Anyway, it worked well for me. I didn't get any drama, and I ended up graduating and landing a job with a top 25 software company.
Yup... just writing on the wall (and little else) for a long time now. Now that's a fast turnaround time for a strategic acquisition! Oh, and by the way, a final goodbye to Symbian. Surprise! :-)

Nokia's software division will manage to drown Qt, too.
Equally important, a technical co-founder must be able to explain complex technical issues in a way "regular people" can understand them. This is dramatically more difficult than it seems. In general, I think one of the true signs of well-rounded intelligence is being able to distill a complex idea into a readily understandable one. Think of pg, Salman Khan (Khan Academy), etc.
Use barehanded gestures to interact with LuminAR's projected screens
Just use Braintree's API with their vault. It's as easy as it gets without going with Chargify/Spreedly/etc, especially if you're just doing plain vanilla recurring billing.
مشاهدة مباراة ريال مديد و راسينغ سانتاندير 23/10 بث مباشر
I want to retain title bars, clearly separated from toolbars, as the only way to actually move a window. (You know, to upgrade the modern Mac to the same technology that the Apple IIGS and Mac Plus interfaces were capable of in 1985.)

On the surface, you'd think that making a larger clickable area would help. Except, they removed all the boundaries, so you can't tell where the "move my window" pixel ends and the "click this button" pixel begins. That is just stupid design.

When I try to click a toolbar button or open a menu, I shouldn't be able to send my window halfway across the screen because I was off by a pixel when swiping the mouse. Adding to the frustration, you can't use Undo to fix this mistake. Apple further "improved" this by banishing customizable toolbars half the time (why?), so I can't even rearrange certain items to reduce my chances of mis-clicking the rest of the window.
The LuminAR project (also at MIT Media Lab) [1] is much more down to earth. It projects onto a 2d surface and then you interact with the surface via gestures with your bare hands.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1820748
The more generalized takeaway from this is that you shouldn't use a heavyweight listener to handle polling (or websockets in the near future) if you can avoid it.

PHP was the culprit here, but I can't help but think you'd have had the same problem if you were trying to do the same thing with RoR, any Java app server, or any of the Python frameworks.

Likewise, node.js or Twisted probably would have been an equally effective replacement.
Or just listen to or watch the classes online. Plenty of great schools have audio or video podcasts of lectures available.
" ...after waving your arms around for a bit the novelty wears off and you go back to wanting to mash buttons."

Not me. Button-mashing is tedious. I like standing up, pointing and waving and clicking and twirling. It's engrossing when done well; for example, Wii bowling or Wii table tennis. Or any game with a sword fight. :)
Thanks! I understand your point, but a fork server is so simple I don't think there is much that can go wrong there, if it was serving more data I would be worried, but its meant to do a quick and short reply.
agreed, but == being a non-associative operator is still just sick.
In the US, yes, but thats a US problem.

But diesel in the UK now has 10 ppm sulfur.

In the US it used to be higher than 500 ppm, now its regulated to 500ppm for some vehicles and lower for some other classes.

Starting in 2014 all US will be 15ppm.
A more concise way of saying it might be that for founders it is a way of life, for employees it is a job.
S3/Cloudfront: I use these for static file (images, CSS, Javascript, etc). A current project I'm working on requires serving tens of thousands of images, so rather than having to deal with storing these myself, dealing with backups, etc. Cloudfront also serves these from edge locations closer to users for better performance.

EC2/EBS/ELB/RDS: My projects are too big for shared hosting, too small to buy a cluster of servers. EC2 is the best option for "in-between" projects. I can scale vertically or horizontally very easily. Elastic load balancing makes this very easy...just clone a new server from a storeed EBS snapshot and add it to the load balancer. I write my apps to point to a common RDS database instance (soon to be upgraded to support read replicas).

I'm a developer, not a sys admin, so I use the AWS Management Console most of the time. That makes it really easy to add/remove servers, create new S3 buckets, etc.
I used to know a guy just like this. He had a PhD in physics, but was a bartender for a couple years while he did his own thing. Now he's part of some research group.
I'm surprised you use Mathematics as an example of a field that's hard to self teach. I actually think Mathematics is one of the easiest fields to self-teach in - you really only need books / video lectures, some paper and pencils, and your brain. It's even less demanding than programming in that sense!

There are also several famous self-taught Mathematicians.
Consider that perhaps your accountant has a different perspective. Accountants don't get involved until the company makes enough money to need an accountant. So his perspective, which he may not realize, may be "Given that a company succeeds, it's better to have been started by a single person."

PG has a different perspective. He's less concerned with questions which assume a company has succeeded; he's more concerned with questions about whether or not a company will succeed. So PG's perspective is more "A company is more likely to succeed with multiple founders."

My point: the two perspectives seem mutually exclusive, but they may not be.
Here is the thing.

There is currently no advantages to Minority Report interfaces that isn't better done by the computer itself.

A Minority Report type interface requires algorithms that multiply your actions way more than any system currently available.

It's kind of like doing a combo in Tekken or some other figthing game.

It's valuable if you can control real time with additional powers but we are not even close to getting there.

The kind of advantages that 3D interfaces gives cannot yet be harvested in 99% of the cases.

Perhaps controlling a spaceship or a satellite but in most cases it's not better it's just different.
Setting up Squid on Linux (Calamari, anyone?)
If Adobe provides a tool to convert Flash into a Cocoa app, akin to their tool for producing iPhone apps, those would presumably be allowed in the App Store.
I don't live in the Bay Area, but I attended Startup School and was actually surprised by the opposite - I met many, many more non-technical people than I would have initially expected.
Interesting, I've recently been doing something similar with friends and family but with a charitable twist...

They donate their unused electronics (iPhone, Blackberry, iPods, etc) to me and I give them away to people who need them in exchange for community service hours.

The goal is to get people involved with the community as well as recycle used electronics that would otherwise sit in a drawer for years and eventually wind up in a landfill.

So far I've used craigslist to give away an original 5gb iPod, iPhone 3g and 15" Macbook Pro battery in exchange for ~40 hours worth of community service (Habitat for Humanity and soup kitchens).

I've been tossing around the idea of turning this into a non profit so that donations can be tax deductible. It would be nice to have a monetary incentive to donate used electronics in addition to the feel-good karma incentive.

Right now I'm wrapping up a few projects and hope to dig into this idea a little deeper in the next week or so (come up with a name, look into what it takes to become a 501(c)(3), list some more items that have been donated, etc). When I do that, I'm definitely going to refer back to this thread for some ideas!
He means that from an accounting and tax perspective, the partnership form is the most complicated business entity you could choose. The tax code on partnerships is complicated enough that you could get into serious tax trouble without even knowing (or having any reason to believe) that you're doing anything wrong.

Also, partners in a partnership are not shielded from liability (i.e., for lawsuits, business debts, etc.) like investors in LLCs or corporations are.

Friendship can help, but at the end of the data, a business is about money. Do you know enough about your friend's financial wherewithal to be comfortable launching a business with him/her?
My favorite right now is PEG.js: http://pegjs.majda.cz/
Why is using virtual currency in gambling games patent-worthy if the unrestricted use of virtual currency already exists?
I do agree to an extent. I'd be interested to see if Citrus is faster... I'll write up a test in a week or two and we shall see!
I've had the same issue, all the best people I know are happy where they are. But I've managed to get some of them to agree to help me part time
Better than learning how to code, learn how to build your app. That is a bit different. If you learn how to code you will hit a wall once you start reading about encapsulation, recursion, trees, data structures etc (all of which I have yet to mess with).. Instead write down what your application needs to do at different levels and learn how to do each one.
Anywhere Between 0 and 80% of my time.

Starting out a project, there is a lot more wrestling with stuff.
You also spend more time wrestling if you are just learning the technology. After a while of using something, it gets quicker.

On certain days, I have meetings and stuff, or I am doing things management requires me to do.

Other times I spend all day as tech support hotline. (Some programmers don't like that type of stuff, but I like helping people. It is a nice break from code).

Other weeks I will spend almost all of my time coding, whether I'm working on my own project, bailing on someone else's deadline, or fixing bugs/documenting.

I also spend a lot of time outside of work thinking about the code I'm going to write. It is easy to underestimate the amount of time you spend thinking about coding harder problems in your free time. Stuff will just come to me at odd times. A lot of the time I will go home and five totally lost, and come back at 8 ready to type up a solution.
I think the right answer would involve a hack that bent or even broke the written rules but made everyone wealthier (better off) in the end.
Is node.js best for Comet?
Use tools for their proper purpose.

Java was originally designed for programming embedded devices. Python was originally designed as a teaching language. One anecdote suggests that Lisp's original designers always intended to add syntax to the language.

Perhaps a decade after a language's invention it's possible to discuss its current suitability and design for specific tasks more than its original design intent.

(I consider PHP's relative ease of deployment over everything else far more explanatory of its ubiquity than any original design intent.)
A Different Kind of URL Shortener
It's a mindset. You believe it, you become it :).
Did you create an apache module? If not, what libs did you use?
It would be really awesome if YC put on some type of match-making event for single founders to find co-founders in person. Like a speed dating event for startups.

I feel like that would be somewhat counter-productive for YC.

They're looking for people who are going to be Flexible and Determined to make the startup happen, regardless of what obstacles get thrown in the way. Finding a co-founder is one of the first real obstacles, and will definitely not be the hardest one over the life of the startup. By exemplifying the qualities listed in this essay, a single founder should be able to find at least one solid co-founder.
Mac Office won't be on the App Store, because Microsoft has their own license key systems, their own site license deals, etc.
I didn't think about the aspect of Flash updates. If Flash is no longer installed updated by Apple, I will have to download and install the Flash updates myself, or count on Adobe to handle updates. (Which judging from past experience with Adobe Flash player updates in Windows, might be suboptimal.)

Ultimately I would like to go no flash, and probably could today. I don't play flash games, so I won't have a problem there. Both YouTube and Vimeo, the two video sites I use most, have an HTML 5 version, so I don't even need flash for that.

Chances are if I uninstalled Flash today all I would miss are flash ads, and that would be a good thing, especially since getting rid of Flash closes another potential security hole.
"One piece is that forget that what we're trying to optimize is happiness, and if those 13.4% of waiters are happy, then who cares if they have a BA or MA?"

Sorry to nitpick, but this is important. Never mind whether a degree really brings more happiness - who said we're trying to optimize happiness anyway? It's certainly not what most societies try and optimize, at least not on the societal level.

Just as a simple example, sending kids to join the army is not in the best interests of the kids' happiness, nor in the best interests of the parents' happiness; yet every society chooses to do so (never mind your personal stance on the military, societies are obviously optimizing for self-preservation over the happiness of individuals.)
In the startup world, the biggest benefit to being able to do some level of technical work seems to be being able to more quickly attract a truly high quality technical co-founder. If you just have an idea and promise equity, you'll have a tough time attracting top talent. If you have an an idea, promise equity, and are willing to pay a ~market salary, you might do okay - but the idea better be really great since your money will run out.

If you have a prototype/demo and some level of traction, you can much more easily attract better technical talent.
I never noticed that before. The spotlight view works symmetrically: full on when it's bound to appear, fades out when it disappears.
LEARN IT YOURSELF. IT'S NOT HARD.

I am a developer that hangs out in startup circles and I get approached several times a week by "idea / business people" if I'm interested in joining a venture as a technical co-founder. My answer so far has always been no.

It's very hard to convince someone that your idea is golden. Even if you do find a co-founder, it's even harder to instill your ideology and passion into them. You should be founding projects with people you know already, not strangers. You don't want an employee -- you want a missionary.

Many non-technical people seem to think that developers lack creativity and need their guidance. What gave them this illusion? The majority of great web products came from people who could write a prototype. Do that and you'll attract attention from developers who will want to join your project.

Writing a prototype is not rocket science, and if you'll try it, you'll also see that programming is very fun and rewarding. Kate Ray hits the nail on the head -- all you need is regular old hard work. I started programming when I was 12 and it's not because I'm Doogie Howser. I just wanted to learn it, so I did.
I especially like how moving a video from one monitor to another requires moving a bulky plastic (glass?) plate from one terminal to another, a plate sufficiently large to hold an entire computer, touchscreen, and information storage for a hundred videos.
Thanks! Your kind words are much appreciated.

I sometimes have the wrong kind of determination. I created a program for managing classified ads, a desktop database-backed app that integrated with Aldus (yes, that long ago) PageMaker. I did some stuff I'm proud of, including finagling my way into the booth with Aldus at MacWorld and posing for a picture with Guy Kawasaki (a hero of mine those days)...

And yes, I sold my software in Canada, the US, and even South America. But my pricing model was all wrong, I didn't grasp that the reason my competition charged 3-5x the amount that I charged (US$795) was that it cost so much to sell software at that time, the cost of ramen was irrelevant. It took me a while to figure this out. I think the turning point was when I looked out of my apartment window and realized that the bank had towed my car away.

Anyways, I had the persistence of a bull, but as the OP notes, a little flexibility would have gone a long way.
ctrl-f grammer

Really?
So has anyone used this combination for realtime and historical log searching (like what Splunk offers)?
You don't necessarily have to wave your arms around. I don't know how the g-speak works, but if it uses the orientation of the hand to do raycasting (as it should), you can leave your hand comfortable by your side and not be bothered by having to raise your arms at shoulder level.

The real pain comes when you try to apply 3D interfaces like g-speak to problems that are not inherently 3D. You get awkward interaction and a lot of wasted time. Real applications of 3DUIs include medical operation planning, virtual reality, scientific data visualization and architecture, just to name a few. Also, in most cases, gestural interfaces are not the most efficient way to do it.
It's really exposed the emptiness of some of the high-minded excuses pirates have long used. It's no longer expensive software from massive companies with huge revenues. It's no longer 'sticking it to the man'.

It's frankly kind of pathetic.
Sales drop for sites after Amazon implements Affiliate API throttling
If my startup is a running back, I feel like I'm Barry Sanders.
This may well be true of companies generally-- restaurants and plumbers and kennels and so on. There the downside of having multiple owners may outweigh the upside. But with startups it's the other way around.
I completely bypassed apache all together. Apache is not used for the 1 second ajax call at all. The only libs i used were jansson for easy json manipulation and mysql++ for database access
This is one of the more heinous quotes in the entire article.

First, it seems to write off any sense of plasticity in cognition and learning.

Second, these people clearly were successful in that they earned a degree, so ojbyrne is right in that this statement and the data have no correlation; say what you will about the quality of an education in some institutions, but I can assure you that plenty of people in food service and janitorial occupations dropped out of college (if they were fortunate enough to have the opportunity available).

Finally, it underscores the article's implication that a lack of success invalidates the reason for having tried at all. As other commenters pointed out, a college degree can be a vehicle for personal fulfillment, salary maximization, etc. (There was a link on HN very recently about the 100-year-old man going for his PhD... is his effort not worthwhile?) Call me crazy, but I believe people who attain a degree are enriched in some way, and if they fall short of their original goal it's still better to have tried.

I work for an education-related startup, and I'm quick to acknowledge that problems abound in higher education... but this article really raised my hackles.
One of the most interesting things about Amazon is how they have iterated their business over time - from a website selling stuff to a marketplace to becoming a platform (in multiple areas).