skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Guide a college student
Hi guys

In the last five months I've been reading through the discussions here at HN and right now Hacker News is my homepage. I absolutely love this place. I love the energy, the intellect and all the ideas that are being thrown around. I've watched StartupSchool, I've read most if not all of PG's articles, and I'm constantly writing down ideas that come up in my head. This has all been happening since my senior year in high school. Then again, I know there is a big difference from doing all of these little things, and actually putting them into play and executing them. In fact, I think I should have already started something up regardless of the time constraints I have with tennis.

A little bit about myself... I'm a college student at one of the U.C. schools and I'm also on their tennis team. It's hard to balance school, tennis and fun-time but I like the intensity of my schedule, the exercise and everything that comes with being a college athlete.

Well, aside from that, I've always been into building things, especially things that involve competition\rankings. I want to have my own startup, at least eventually, or at least work for one before I graduate. I want to know what knowledge\insight\tips you guys can offer me and what I can do as a college student (aside from educating myself) to get myself ahead of the game. I really want to do this, and I'm willing to eat shit, throw away sleep, and make major sacrifices. I know I can.

Right now, I'm an undeclared freshman and I am about to declare either a major in Economics and a minor in Computer Science. Would it be better if I majored in Comp Sci? UCSD doesn't have a business major....(wondering if I would have even needed one)

Well, that's all for now. Thanks much for reading this if you didn't already close the window! Appreciate it guys and I can't wait for your responses.
I agree with you, but only because what you are saying is a tautology. If the government was vaporized, and some powerful corporations took over, there would be a new de facto government. The corporations would then have to be overthrown.

If a national government decided to let an independent fiat currency be developed by an independent corporation, and all the other corporations, such as banks, agreed to use that fiat currency, that currency would have the same value: you need it to trade for your needs because you get paid in it.

It is not clear why trade could not continue in the absence of the federal government, as all the banks would probably be willing to lend to corporations with good credit, and they would probably continue storing their reserves in those banks.

In other words, I think you assume too many magical steps.
I agree, they messed up. They've also been pretty good about trying to improve communications with their users in the past weeks.
HN is rapidly changing in to some real-life version of pay-it-forward. I'm going to have to think hard on a way in which I can contribute to this phenomenon, I think that some amazing stuff may grow out of it.
Very true. If it was really testing, why would they stop exactly and immediately when informed by the blogger that their behavior was 'caught'? They would've continued the so called experiment if it was really one.

I think they did it to inflate the number of diggs on the front page stories so that it looked like more people were frequenting the site. That's the reason that there's no apparent bias in the selection of media outlets whose articles the accounts digged up.
I'd rather Spotify were independent, because someone like Google owning it might discourage potentially innovative competitors from springing up.
Thanks. There really isn't anything more dangerous than just a bit of knowledge.
Toshiba had (has?) some laptops with transflective displays.
I still have yet to find an explanation for what looked like them lying about the # of comments an article has: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741574
Game Physics for Javascript developers
launchy is great, but since I switched to OS X a few years ago the best replacement I've found is quicksilver. It's free and much more responsive, customizable than spotlight.
QuiBids: eBay+Casino?
What do you think of the game mechanics & financial model behind QuiBids (quibids.com)?

Here's how it works:
(1) you buy a pack of 'bids' for $0.60 each.
(2) items are auctioned for a set time-limit* beginning with an initial price of only a few pennies
(3) each bid raises the cost by $0.01
(4) the final bidder (when the time runs out) wins!

seems each bid also tacks on ~10 more seconds so an item will hover close to a sale-point as users maneuver to secure the final bid (hence the price keeps going up, the time stretches out, and QuiBids makes more $$$).

Yet scores of folks are already addicted...keen to (essentially) finance someone else's winnings solely because they're drawn by (and feel to a large extent they can influence) the result in their favor.<p>But each bid costs me $0.60, so I could potentially not win a thing!

Meanwhile, QuiBids can afford to give away an iPad for $100 and still score a healthy profit margin:<p>$100 = 10,000 bids = $6000 !!
(since each bid spent pays QuiBids $0.60/bid)

This seems insane! It's like eBay, but they're profiting from every incremental bid. Making bids doesn't really* feel like spending money so it's like eBay-merged-with-a-casino.

Seems to me like the HOUSE ALWAYS WINS!

Thoughts?
I will contend that certain things are difficult depending upon age.

That frosty drink is well-neigh impossible unless it is a private affair. It is almost as impossible when you look 15. Age is sometimes important when attempting to get the attention of your peers.

Other than that, it's pretty spot-on, and other than the mentor/GSoC items, that was exactly how I got involved in open source.

EDIT: I will qualify the age issue. If you are 18/19 and you are attending a conference where the median age is 26 and the everyone there is 22 or older, you will find it awkward to say hi. I experienced this at my first CakeFest in Germany, and was lucky enough that a few random developers took me in as part of their social group.
I'm with you --- Digg's response is pure bullshit. They have $30MM in funding and don't have a test environment??? Yeah. Right.
I, personally, have a dedicated server from HostGator. They don't tend to be very popular in in HN circles, but I've had a great experience with them.

Support is very fast and very helpful. They have even installed some software on the server that I was not able to, within hours of my request. And I've had bascially 0 downtime in the 4 years that I have been using them.

That said, I am right now looking to switch over to a virtualized host because I want to learn more about server management. But if you don't want to deal with that, then HostGator is a great solution.
This is true, but ironically Chrome's dev tools take up more vertical space than Firebug.

I'm happy I've made the switch, though it would be nice if Chrome/webkit traded some flashy icons for a more space efficient table especially in the "Resources" tab.
If anyone is wondering how this might be done without Flash/Java, WhatWG have spec'd recording for the HTML5 Stream API but I don't think it's properly defined or implemented in any browser yet:

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...
I think most of what you want is entirely possible with current compiler technology. It is unfortunate that most of the effort is currently directed at optimizing hard to reason about low level code.
There is some pretty good advice in there that would apply to just about any website.
Perl best practices is probably the best perl book I've read. I'm working my way through higher order perl and thats a great read as well.
I have an idea I am working on that will let sellers get what they are wanting from their items ... this is not like ebay because a company is selling this and making the money, ebay craigslist etc. is about people selling their own items. I have my own reservations about sites like this (beezid and swoopoo are similar) but I suppose it is market driven and if they are in business clearly all people dont feel the same way i do
Actually the point of an e-reader is the e-book, not the e-ink. E-ink is just a way to show text in a way that drains little battery and gives little eye strain. It has, however, a couple very significant drawbacks. And it seems more expensive to manufacture than a very good LCD.
Redesign of our homepage and a few informational pages, which should be fairly straight-forward design work, and design of the product interior pages as well, which will require more thought on usability, layout, etc.
If you want to be a technical entrepreneur or even want to be in technology field, I would suggest CS. But again, your interest matters alot.

Dont go with trend but go with your interest. You can make money in every field (sometimes quickly sometimes not).
Breaks on apostrophes.
What an awful name for such a tool. Unix commands have the command as subject, not the user (examples: ls, find, make, touch, shutdown). From the name and the 'ls' example, I expected something that reacted to file system notifications, but this doesn't watch, it repeats a command, clearing the screen before every iteration.
As a freshman, i guess you would have had some introductory programming class. If you liked it a LOT, then declare CS as your major.

Having a CS degree from a U.C. school will definitely be helpful in the long run if you want to be in the tech/startup arena. Most of the startup internships(assuming you want to work for one before you graduate) are for developers and you would definitely have an edge with a CS major.
The Archos 101 has comparable price, a 10" display, Android Market and looks very very good indeed.
Wow, the amount of time and effort that she must have dedicated in completing her feedback is astounding.

The least we can do is bump up a post about her startup the day it launches.

Bloggergirl, get ready for the voluminous amount of web traffic on launch day!
E Ink Holdings (and competitors) have been demoing colour E Ink screens for a while. This doesn't use that but I can't wait to see one that does.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/1/google/appengine/ext/webapp/__init__.py", line 513, in __call__
handler.post(*groups)
File "/base/data/home/apps/reworder/1.345779356045891791/reworder.py", line 122, in post
headers={'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'}).content)
File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-0.96/django/utils/simplejson/__init__.py", line 232, in loads
return cls(encoding=encoding, **kw).decode(s)
File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-0.96/django/utils/simplejson/decoder.py", line 251, in decode
obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
File "/base/python_runtime/python_lib/versions/third_party/django-0.96/django/utils/simplejson/decoder.py", line 270, in raw_decode
raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

Entered text "this is a test." and hit submit.
I think a lot of people just assumed they were there, because of TV and movies. It's easy to forget that things like driving a rover around on Mars are EXTRAORDINARY FEATS OF ENGINEERING when you forget that not a single human being has ever set foot on a planet other than Earth.
Anyone know any of the logistics behind how this was done?
I have a couple with http://www.hivelocity.com/ that I throw a constant ton of traffic at.

As a bonus they have this guy there Dave who is absolutely awesome if you can get him on your MSN/whatever IM.
The thing about Dollar Auctions or All-Pay Auctions (neither are really anything new) is that they play on the gamblers mentality by making it a pseudo game. The actual winner, if actually well-invested in to the auction, may end up purchasing the item for $100, plus their portion of the 10k bids so in reality they could really be spending close to retail price on the actual product. That is of course assuming that the actual Dollar Auction is being run fairly and there even is a legitimate winner in the end.

There are various other sites just like this including Swoopo, which reported 28.3 million revenue in 2008.

IMHO it's not necessarily a scam, but certainly plays on the gullibility of the consumers and is indeed a ripoff.

For an interesting article, check out Joshua Stein's attempt at gaming Swoopo programmatically: http://jcs.org/notaweblog/2009/03/06/trying_to_game_swoopo_c...
Hence, Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years[1]. All kidding aside, I'm pretty sure it's unrelated to the actual code :)

[1] http://norvig.com/21-days.html
Sony Ericsson - Produits - Accessoires - Vue d'ensemble - EP500
Outlook 2011 for Mac to use Webkit?
'Nitro' looks like the only dedicated they have? It's pretty pricey, though it does look like the hardware might justify that.
Our experiences with FeedbackRoulette: A hit and many misses
Best advice that I can give is to just try something. Build something and put it out there. IMO this is just as important as your classes.

I worked throughout my entire 4 years of college and am ahead of most of my classmates in my career because I suffered through 4 years of late nights to get relevant work experience while also going to school. Most of my classmates were doing internships for nothing while I was building things for a pretty good salary.

I learned just as much working as I did in the classroom.
It's a GNU command rather than "Linux". Does anybody care or know the difference?
PHP Dark Arts: Daemonizing a Process
> to deal with downtime yourself. I'm not particularly good at it, so I appreciate having experts take care of it for me.

This is downtime coming from their infrastructure, not your app.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you. I see successful, "big" companies mentioned here with "YC-whatever" on the end and am blown away by which ones are YC alumni!
This seems like an almost deliberate misreading of what I've said:

This seems like a very common problem on the Internet, perhaps even more so than in the rest of life. Most of the HN comments I disagreed with on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1729501 regarding "How Universities Work," an essay I wrote, concern misreadings.

The same thing happened regarding an essay about the movie Avatar. In fact, it was so common that I wrote another essay examining the reaction to the first: http://jseliger.com/2009/12/30/trolls-comments-and-slashdot-... .

I think one reason pg says things like, "I don't mean..." in his essays is avoid this kind of thing as much as possible. I'm a grad student in English and assign a couple of his essays to freshmen; the most common disagreements they have are with things not actually said in the essay. A favorite question I ask in class or on their journal entries: "Where do you see that?" The usual answer turns out to be, "nowhere."
I agree with this completely. If you have an interest that leans either way, go with that.

If you don't know which to choose, I would suggest CS with an Economics minor. You'll learn enough in the basic Economic classes to run a business.
I host an app on there that I've been using all day and I didn't notice it go down. I reckon I've got some kind of unplugged-TV poltergeist action going on.
Why wouldn't Comet or various long polling techniques work? Or web sockets?
Ah, thank you for clarity. The concept still applies I think.
It wasn't a genuine question, no rhetoric meant.
Maybe for customer service?
Spotify's business model is based upon a collection of dubious contracts with record labels that have nothing to gain from spotify. That is amazing.

Is it me or does anyone realise that spotify is napster all over again? I mean come on even Sean Parker is on board. lol.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't believe stuff should be down-voted just because it doesn't fit into the prevailing opinion, I'm just saying that I don't take it personally when it happens.
I remember when the screenshots of Windows 95 first came out in the magazines and people's reactions. With the people I knew, at least, was an almost universal hatred of the Start menu which I put down to it merely being "new." In retrospect, it was a pretty stupid idea UI wise that, sadly, so many others copied (IMHO, of course).
Indeed. At some point, all the preparation and practice is going to turn them into a good programmer!
I want to know what's hiding between 0.1 yoctometers and Planck length, it seems like a big blank according to the Flash app thing...
Even the B&W Nooks have a WebKit-based browser that works fairly well (renders Facebook usably), although the UI is a bit clunky. JavaScript is a bit slow, though, so I hope that the hardware is beefier.
For me I like having Chrome auto-updated in the background on my Mac, because it always works whenever I need it, and I don't have to think about it at all. However I can understand not wanting auto-updates for software that is less likely to work properly after an update...

I wish that I could set most of my applications to silently auto-update, and then set a few back to manual if I ever decided one had an issue. Auto-updating is an awesome idea for browsers and for frequently updated things like Chrome.
Yup. Quite a few indie Mac programs do this, too, or similarly will ask on startup, but one of the dialog box's buttons reads "Install on quit".
We're probably not in the center of the universe.

From having listened to Dr Pamela Gay on Astronomy Cast for the last few years, I thought the general line of thinking now was that there is no center (or if there is, it's "everywhere") due to way it loops around on itself.
Ask HN: Tool for creating app mockups?
It's time for me to begin the design phase of my first startup and I'm thinking of Photoshop in order to test different colors.

I use html tables to show financial information and It'd be nice to use gradients. Plain colors don't look nice, at least the combinations that I had tried.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'd prefer simple unmanaged rather than panels, etc.
I haven't done blood work yet to see what my cholesterol and thyroid levels are but should have that done in the next few weeks.

I'm sure you're very well aware of that, but just noting that cholesterol levels itself is not a good predictor of anything. It is more important to look at the levels of high and low density lipoproteins (or "good" and "bad" cholesterol).

In fact, it might be a bit late for a blood test if you haven't done one before starting a diet, because you wouldn't know what was the change in cholesterol levels that the diet induced.
For example, if HDL went up a lot, and the LDL went down a little, I would consider it a good thing, even though the total cholesterol might go up.
Really? There's dozens of permutations for just the function prototype.

char* itoa(int value, char* str, int base);
char* itoa(int i, void* (*allocator)(size_t));
int itoa(unsigned input, char* buffer, size_t buffer_length);

How a non-programmer could recognize the body of the function is beyond me.
Looks promising, thanks for the pointer.
Follow your heart. Whatever you're passionate about - do that.

I personally love programming because I get to create and build whatever I can dream up. Give CS a shot, you might find that it's a really good fit.

If not, don't get too discouraged. Programming isn't for everyone and there are lots of opportunities to 'build things' without it.

If you're not sure what you're passionate about try asking yourself why you want to do a startup so badly. That'll probably lead you down the right track.

As long as you're working on the things you're _really_ interested in you can't go wrong.
I know this point is moot anyway, but what would bother me more is the less obvious misreading like "Valuations don't matter.. Would you invest in a YC company at a ten billion dollar valuation?"

If you are under the impression that you a writing for an audience that want to understand what you mean, you can safely assume that you are talking about the realm of common scenarios. If you start feeling like you are writing for critics of this sort, you start to spell things out in a way that is, I think, worse writing.
A minor nit - it's not a sales tax that is due on out of state purchases, but rather a use tax (though it's commonly the same rate as the local sales tax).

The issue isn't so much that it's rarely collected, but that purchasers who have a legal responsibility to declare and pay it rarely do because there is (as you stated) no practical way for the state to track such purchases, excepting some obvious exceptions like out-of-state purchased vehicles - many states collect the use tax before they allow the vehicle to be registered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax
It's going to be very interesting to see what happens when HN continue to grow. I don't know how big HN is right now, and I don't know where the breaking points for an online community are, but growth does mean change. I remember some years ago I'd go to slashdot to read the comments...

This is and has been a fantastic site (I'm personally fairly recently a registered user, before that I was just reading), and I hope it will continue to be. But I do also know that if it continues to grow, it will mean there will have to be changes (more people = more trolls, etc). Dealing with change is always hard, I hope the spirit of HN will remain.

EDIT: actually meant to be a follow-up to jacquesm's post. It appears I failed :-/
Ask HN: It's Never Sunny (in the AM) in Silicon Valley 
How do you wake up in the morning? I've been here 4 months and still can't jump out of bed when its still foggy out.
There is no "general thinking" because no one's measured the edge of the universe to see what it's like. And certainly no one has seen the universe "wrap" around itself. In the absence of evidence, everyone just picks the model that looks best to them on paper.
I doubt anybody at spotify is happy with this and it could very easily backfire as a strategy.

Odds would have it this is not an 'authorized' leak. (we used to call that a press-release).
Exactly, they'll fake it just like hckers fake Firefox security warning...
http://www.gdatasoftware.co.uk/security-labs/news/news-detai...

What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes...
Yes, I'm wondering if the OP now has a better view of people who own guns.
A day in the life of a reviewer at Shutterstock
If you would like to learn database theory, then I recommend the following book:

_An Introduction to Database Systems_ (8th Ed.)
By C. J. Date
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Database-Systems-8th/dp/0...
Its an Asynchronous World: With Robert Virding, Erlang's Co-creator
I'm using http://joesdatacenter.com/ because it's the best price:power ratio I've found under $100/mo. I've got a dual core/4GB/1500GB for $79/mo.

I've been using them for ~9 months with just one or two minor hiccups.
LimeWire Shuts Down After Losing Court Battle With The RIAA
Adding fibers to v8: efficiency + clarity in SSJS at Asana
Qi (programming language)
Engadget's Macbook Air review
If you go with them let me know, I'll pass on Dave's MSN addy ... it's insanely valuable having a direct line of contact.

Or just put "Dave" in the how you heard about them field, he'll probably contact you just from that.

To really put into perspective how useful it is - a while back this crazy little game caused a million+ people to connect to my servers simultaneously. Dave has his own big-ass server and within an hour or so had a few VPS's deployed for me to carry the slack.