skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Another way to look the whole situation apart from bootstrapping gung-ho which I suggested earlier will be to ask yourself the following
1. Do you already have customers who have shown intent on using the product? - if Yes then it indicates that people are waiting for your product so there is a reason for you to release soon. If No then find these potential customers

2. If you already have a set of potential customers then reach out to them and validate whether they need all the features which you are planning to include in the first release? - If the features (the basic set) is less than what you had understood then you need to check how much money you need to get it out to the users. Again you are just validating your understanding and not asking the users for what features they'll want.

3. Do you have a kick ass team which anyone who you go for funding will ask you for? - This as mentioned above matters to anyone whose going to give you money

4. Is there competition to your product? If yes then how do you stand up against them?

Answers to these questions will indicate something and then on top of that you should add you gut feel whether you are comfortable or not with taking outside money.

Best of luck.
> It usually takes 2 to 3 years.

There must be a few differences. 2 years is an incredibly short time period to get a Phd.

here is Canada, and any US program I looked at...
4 years is usually a minimum and 5 years is common.
When did I call executives middle class? He made two points, one about an alleged lack of a Chinese middle class, and the other about the breadth of Indian executives. They are not the same, and I did not respond as if they were the same. You totally misread me.

Furthermore, if you haven't seen a middle class here in your visit here a few months ago, you haven't interacted with people here. I'm living here in China right now, and I interact with the middle class every day at work, on the streets, in community centres, etc. It's for real. If you live here for a few months and seriously interact with the locals and STILL for some reason don't see a middle class, then I'll start taking your opinion seriously on that matter. But it'll be hard because I'm experiencing the exact opposite.

For the record, the super rich are not the middle class. They are the super rich. Don't get them confused. The Hiltons and other big family money in the US can't be considered middle class either, and it really seems to me that you're referring to those types as your "middle class".
Ask HN: What browsers do you use everyday? I use 2 simultaneously
I just read an article on HN about how Chrome made an 8.5% gain last month. And had to wonder why. I was wondering if anyone else works like I do. While at work, all day long, I use 2 browsers all day long: minefield (firefox beta 8, latest trunk) and Chromium 9. Sometimes I am forced to use IE 8 for corporate stuff, but I really don't like that. I am stuck on windows XP because I work for a corp. But at home, I use Firefox and chrome on my Ubuntu.

When I do HTML coding I test in every browser I can, using variants of the big 3 engines, gecko, Trident, and Webkit.

So what does everyone else use?
This post is a bit old. And, for example, there were some changes with Azure announced last week at PDC, like the VM roles. But this article is a good baseline.But definitely make sure to look up the latest on the various services before making a decision.
SB Nation is a media/technology startup in Washington, DC. We're hiring Ruby developers and an agile project manager:

http://www.sbnation.com/jobs/developer (remote considered)

http://www.sbnation.com/jobs/agile_project_manager (local only)

We're a network of 280+ sports news sites & communities. As newspapers are shutting down their sports sections, we're quietly reinventing the media model with profitable, high-quality, innovative coverage by and for fans. Our investors include Accel Partners, Allen & Company, and Comcast Interactive Capital. We get around 16 million unique visitors every month.

Our small product team develops the custom publishing and community platform (built on Rails) that powers the sites. The interesting problems we face range from editorial analytics, to social distribution, to scaling the system to handle our rapid growth.

Here are some of the humans you'll be working with: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlovitt/4507489423/in/set-72157...

And some recent press:

* Why sports is driving innovation in journalism: http://markcoddington.com/2010/10/08/why-sports-has-taken-th...

* NY Times profile on SB Nation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/media/07fans.html

* Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab: http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/sb-nation-ceo-on-how-were-f...

* Dan Shanoff: http://www.danshanoff.com/2010/06/sb-nation-goes-big-with-lo...
"Facebook could start by realising that I'm not interested in Farmville updates "

OTOH, should Facebook be "smart" about this, or should they just provide a button to hide all Farmville updates? In fact, they try to do the first, and also do the second, so I don't know why people still complain about this.
i'm talking about matlab s/w
Mobile storage: cloud vs. flash drive
I have a (procedural) problem with your critiquing something not inherently bad with no alternative. You haven't presented any new arguments against the GDP nor have you attempted to argue that any possible alternative is more viable than the GDP. I invite you to respond to any of the arguments I made against GDP alternatives.

> The problem with economic sciences...

Honestly, this is hard for me to read.

Lectures on the inadequacies of the GDP are Macro 101 stuff. Throughout college in my different econ classes the shortfalls of the GDP were frequently discussed by several different teachers.

This economic sciences conspiracy to prevent indictments of the GDP you're trying to present as fact is completely fabricated and gives a bad name to economists that do discuss the shortcomings of the GDP (read: every economist ever).
Just a joke on the over-general use of 'what language' in the title.
Americas and Europe (remote): SpiderOak is looking for help in engineering, marketing, and customer service.

Since 2006, SpiderOak provides an easy, consolidated free online backup, sync, sharing, access & storage solution for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux with a zero-knowledge approach to customer privacy. We use Python, Django, web.py, WSGI, jQuery, PostgreSQL, nginx, and varnish, with some occasional heavy-lifting help from C and Erlang.

SpiderOak is a distributed, virtual company - we all set our own work schedule and work from home, coffee shops, or anywhere that can provide a stable Internet connection. We coordinate via Wikis, IRC, email, telepathy, and even face-to-face when possible. We don't bother with time sheets or other types of wage accounting -- we're a tight enough group that it would be obvious if someone wasn't doing her or his job.

We've noticed that some of the most accomplished people we know don't necessarily have polished or extensive resumes. As such, we don't care about formal education, age, gender, geographic location, resume, etc. We like smart people who love what they do and do it really well. Period.

The rest of the story is here: https://spideroak.com/blog/20101030125548-spideroak-is-growi...
It can really vary depending on how far you want to go with it. At the peak of usage in my youth we were all taking in excess of 30 a week, some even 30 in one evening (dropping 4 each time)!
Interesting things start to happen when you get that deep, such "mid-week blues". Where you just get really upset half-way through the week (the other side of the weekends), teary and somewhat irrational.
Typically this is around the point where people give it up due to the side-effects.
We knew we were taking too many when we uttered the words: "its tuesday, so we'll only have 6".

Thankfully it isn't at all addictive so it's not hard to stop. :)
"IT folks are forced to wing it using critical thinking skills, which you don't usually pick up in a beige classroom."

That sums it all up quite well :) The best of the best in IT know all they need to know out of passion long before they go into a classroom dedicated to that purpose.
> turn over your personal information to bill collectors

The spokesman pointed out that this was health-related information (since the student had a doctor diagnose his test anxiety); it'd be reasonable to treat that more carefully.
WP7 Sales "Exceeding Expectations"
Yes - if cigarettes were available on prescription, it would massively harm the abilities of cigarette companies to market and advertise (since profits would be hit rather hard!) which in turn would cut out a whole new tranche of smokers.
maybe the stock market isn't predictable?
I had exam anxiety back when I was 17/18, I pretty much panicked during an exam. We were being tested in national university entrance tests twice a year, with the ability to retake previous ones in later sessions, so the workload and stress was immense by the end. I sat down, read the paper, and was completely unable to string the words I was reading into coherent sentences in my head. I got counseling for stress, and thankfully I was able to take the exams as intended.

Exam anxiety is real, but the university already had procedures in place about how to deal with that anxiety. Something is wrong, however, when a student only claims exam anxiety after the fact. You know you're anxious about exams before that point. If you are under stress a single time, you know it then. The student already failed that exam once. If the first time he/she was anxious, it should have been reported then. If not, they had a fair shot at passing that exam.

The decision of the dean to change how the exam was to be dealt with is not brilliant, but somewhat OK. It's the upgrading of undergraduate coursework to be doctoral level that should be smelling bad. Messing with the way the exam was to be delivered was simply the smoke from the dodgy fire that was burning underneath.
This is the real difference between Ruby and Python, in my experience too. You're more likely to find Ruby used by people who self-identify as programmers and more likely to find Python used by people who self-identify as some other job - but the amount of code each group writes is probably about the same.
I personally like the option to report spam results to filter them off my searches. I am tired of spammy results on Google.
I suggest hiding the points from submissions, comments and other people's summary page.

Seeing the points doesn't add value and it distorts the opinions and upvotes (people tend to like more what other people recommend).
Appleseed, a Diaspora alternative, goes public
Android Becomes Top Mobile Operating System in U.S., No. 2 Worldwide
It's a matter of practicality though. Most people don't want to spend their life managing groups and preferences, dictating whether a particular update or photo is suitable for this audience or that - the return just isn't worth it. I'll also suggest that inevitably you're going to mess up and publish things to the wrong group and that you're safer with it as it is.

I'm curious about things that you'd not want someone you profess to trust and call a friend to see, but are willing to put on a website which is outside your control which has a history of changing privacy settings with no warning and has shown few signs of interest in personal confidentiality.
I don't know if I'd say the end result is the same - I haven't found an application-centric provider (ie, Azure, Heroku, GAE) that I can perform traditional data-warehousing with yet. I do a lot of database heavy work in Postgres, most of which relies on database user functions to keep things performant, and Rackspace Server / EC2 are the only methods I've found that I can actually do this.

Sure, I have to do some basic sysadmin maintenance, but I'm also not running Facebook here. Some basic monitoring and a few shell scripts and I have a reliable system that serves my clients needs.
Coming from a current college student who spent his entire high school career doing this: it is very possible, but it isn't about your skills. It's about who you know.

I was very lucky. When I was 14, I ran into a very nice person, Mike, from South Carolina through a PHP forum that we both frequented. He had no idea about my age until I told him a few months after we started working together.

Mike had recently been laid off from his full-time IT job, and was getting into the swing of freelance development, much like I was trying to do. He and I explored business models together, shared ideas, and tried to encourage each other's success. When I told him my age (he asked a tax question), he was dumbfounded.

Mike's career quickly took off. He found an affiliate marketing company looking for an awesome PHP developer, and is currently making more than enough to live off of. However, he has absolutely no time for other jobs, nontheless to learn new programming languages. As a result, he sent any excess work my way. Since I am young and have an aptitude for this kind of work, I quickly learned whatever tool(s) were necessary for the job. Ruby, Objective-C, Python...I've had clients for tons of programming languages. (Unfortunately, this means I have to use good 'ol Google for a refresher on every one, but it gets the job done.)

It's all about who you know when you go into this at a young age. Make good connections now; spend a little bit of time asking questions and making personal connections. The opportunity cost of "wasting time" on forums and sending e-mails WILL pay for itself in the long run. Trust me.

I assume you're still in high school, and I can only encourage you to stay in school and take AP classes, especially AP Calculus AB/BC and AP Physics C. They'll teach you how to really use the critical thinking skills that you need to succeed in this business. That, and, if you plan to attend college, take AP Chemistry, because general chemistry will kill any free/development time you have in college. Additionally, whatever college you attend probably has a student employment system for their web development; check it out. I know the University of Michigan has a CAEN web team, which I am a part of (well, technically, I'm on the database team, but it's close enough).

Best of luck, and feel free to shoot me an e-mail!
Thesis Cover Color Selection
Although many students might not be aware of it, how you do your thesis cover is a representation of all the time and energy spent on the writing of the thesis. Understanding the components needed to keep in mind when choosing cover styles will enable you to submit a good cover page.
I'm sure there are people with all sorts of issues with test-taking. But there are a fair number of shirkers too, who use this as an excuse to bypass the system.

I remember once I was teaching a class, and one of the students sprung this on me: he claimed he had some issues with the tests and the time required was too short (in reality, my tests were always designed such that if you knew the material you could ace them in 20 minutes; if you didn't, you could sit there for an hour. And they were open book, open notes, so no memorization required).

So the next test came, and I told him: take as long as you want; I'll be here. The test started at 6pm (it was an evening course). Most of the class left in an hour or so. But he stayed. And I stayed with him. I did my reading, etc. Finally, at 1AM, he gave up and said he was done.

The next day, he dropped the course.
Functional Scala: Introduction
And ironically this is around the time of the "new leader" coming to the fore. Since the last two were preordained by Deng Xiaoping and this one won't be I expect they will try very hard to paper over any cracks in order to maintain an orderly succession. I do not like that particular mix of politics/economics all coming together in one time period.
Then again, the number provides me with the information that it is an article in the ever popular list format.
I don't think he's criticizing them for not following agile methods, considering they didn't exist then. He is criticizing them for not changing their plans based on the developments going on around them.

But mostly, he's just using Iridium as an example of what not to do, regardless of whether they could have known better or not.
Apple's responsibility as a superpower
In the UK, you don't take classes, because you don't take a Masters. You do three years in and out. Four if you struggle, but that's it.

What people are talking about here is usually the US system, where your PhD path includes Masters classes. You get a Masters along the way (I have mine in a drawer somewhere), but this is incidental along the path to the PhD. It takes 2-3 years to get those classes out the way, then you're all research. The system is the same as you are describing, except that Americans don't tend to split them up in their heads.
at that point I'm going to really make changes at a code level - unless I need to get the changes approved or understood by others (which is why I'd show them some new mockups/screens). Iterations can be done so much faster working directly in the view code.
Ask HN: Election Day tomorrow, what do geeks think of the Tea Party?
I'm from Spain but I've been living in the US for the last two years (starting up here after Master's degree). I can't vote and I don't follow politics very closely but I like to keep abreast of recent developments. I just read this on the WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578200086257706.html

I find mass-media quite polarized regarding the Tea Party, so I'm interested in the opinion of people here who I usually agree with on many other topics (tech, startups, etc).
You can use EC2 in somewhat similar ways to GAE. They have Elastic Map Reduce (which runs the MapReduce side of Hadoop) and SimpleDB/S3 for storage. SimpleDB is even one of the backends that Django nonrel supports. The only real instance you have to manage is the web/app server. Amazon also offers a level of free service:

http://aws.amazon.com/free/

So I'd say they are at least somewhat comparable.
But what could they have done differently? They could perhaps iterate the design of each satellite on the assembly line. But things like buying rockets, getting them delivered to the launch site, getting a launch window, etc, it's hard to see how you can do that in sprints. This is about moving physical stuff around.
True, I'll see if HackerNews help me with that ;)
Web de viajes a jordania 
Es una web especializada en viajes a este país de ensueño lleno de misterios y encanto. Desierto, fortalezas, ciudadelas, palacios de mil y una noche, cuevas desde la prehistoria, playas en el mar muerto y hospitalidad beduina, le esperan de la mano de un equipo especializado en el país hachémita.
Matlab and SAS are both considered excellent for financial/statistical modeling. The quants at my old firm used a mix of Matlab, C++ and .NET. However it sounds like you're not integrating with external libraries or realtime data feeds so Matlab should suffice.
I agree wholeheartedly.

The problem with Apple is that people often have extreme opinions about them & their products, whether they love or hate them. Both sides are crazy.

There definitely are some Apple customers who look at them with a critical eye, and in my experience they are very critical of Apple. We expect the best from Apple products and don't hesitate to pipe up when Apple delivers less. We expect perfection but realize that Apple is still run by humans and the first revision of every product they ship isn't going to be made of unicorns and double rainbows. In fact many long time Apple customers never pick up the first revision of a new product, knowing it's going to have issues.

I don't think products from other companies are very different in that regard. But people jump and shout about every tiny detail about Apple products, whether it's good or bad. You have to take it all with a massive spoonful of salt, on both sides. It's unfortunate.
For the record, I'm a Canadian from another province, and I've never heard of such a thing either.
5 Google Engineering Management Mistakes
I first really thought this was a joke...

What about levels of ugliness? Scale from 1 to 10 or like maybe in levels of "bags". The stereotype that the uglier you are the more bags one would need to put over your head before they would "do you"..??

Like a double-bagger....or a triple bagger..as an example.

Then maybe you say call someone a "f-ugly double bagger" and it might be considered a compliment in the goals of this site!
This article is wrong in several places confusing IT and Computer Science. IT degrees have high-unemployment, Computer Science degrees don't.

Treating both subjects as the same thing is incredibly shoddy, and I'd expect better from a magazine targeted at the IT sector.
It's sad that they banned him. What kind of logic is this? Do they really think it would stop other players from doing the same?
I'm not even sure it's a good baseline. For example one of the discussions involves EC2 and .Net and the main criticism of EC2 is it doesn't support Windows 2008. Anyone who knows EC2 will tell you that hasn't been true for a while and that's kind of an important distinction.

I don't keep a close enough eye on App Engine to know about it but as someone who knows Azure and EC2 both of those are mis-represented here and that makes this next to useless imho.
The article also curiously lists IBM exclusively as a "software" company, which seems like an even more clear weasel omission to push an agenda.
With $6b invested, they were a BigCo no matter what they did regarding Motorola.
awesome video clip. hardly the behavior corporate america aims at though.
Google Car Is a Threat to Established Robotics Companies and Clusters
yeah, I know about that, it's optimized for mobile devices, so the main target devices are iOs, WebOs, Android, Symbian....cellphones. http://www.gmbhnews.com is not for the desktop.
I've seen R used for this type of thing. See http://www.milktrader.net/2010/01/programming-custom-backtes...
Be careful of the rabbit hole - once you go down there is no knowing where to stop (and no end of what it can cost!)

Seriously though, it is a fun if somewhat pricey hobby to get into. There is an active community at cocoontech.com and a number of hardware and/or software platforms you can choose from.

I have a setup deployed using CQC (CharmedQuark.com) as the software backbone which is very extensible and robust, though the marketing material isn't great. The online community there is small but vibrant (and some would say zealous).

If you have a significant other in the home then a key factor quickly becomes the reliability of any system that you wire into normal use. They won't be impressed if the bathroom lights don't work in the middle of the night ...

I'd recommend looking at Z-wave thermostats and the various 1-wire temperature probes. I've used the kits from http://www.midondesign.com successfully for these.
IT jobs are skill jobs. Most new college graduates have practically no experience in their fields. This isn't so bad for most fields, but in IT, they will be competing with smart people that also have lots of experience and who are deeply interested in the field. While it is almost expected to enter certain fields with no real experience (Law, Medicine - Internships don't count) that expectation seems to be reversed in IT.
How I nearly invented Facebook
You might consider flipping the question...

Pick a metric: (new user signups, weekly users, whatever)
Which will help improve that metric? improved UX/I or more features/better code base.

Back it up with analytics/funnel analysis. If you spend time on your UX/I, and your signups increase, keep doing it. If your increase in signups start to flatten after X iterations, think about another way, such as SEO or coding more features that new customers are asking for.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1856568

Must be galling, given that it appears this item was submitted by the person who wrote the blogpost.