skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It wouldn't surprise me if women bought, or at least had a say in, a statistically significant portion of men's clothing as well.
Web applications, databases, and APIs are all really very simple. An api is just a collection of functions (or ways of calling functions) someone else wrote. A database is just an api to store tuples. A web application is just a program that listens on a TCP socket for HTTP requests, and responds with HTTP responses.

You can write your own web server in a couple hours, even in C. It won't be any good, but it's a fun confidence building exercise. Then learn Python or Perl or Ruby or Lisp or some language with non-sucky strings, install Apache and mod_python/perl/ruby/lisp, and point it at your script. Voila, instant web application! There are plenty of step-by-step tutorials online.

I was in a similar situation to where you are before I started on Kiko Calendar - I'd never written a web application or used a database or api before in my life. Thanks to the internet, I could learn how in a couple months. You can too.
Opinions are computationally cheap and good-enough approximations of facts. If you had "all the time in the world", you wouldn't need to approximate.
When I Worked at Google...
I guess it's true that nobody wants to leave Google (http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html).
Part of it comes from having the opportunity to work on one of the biggest, best constructed, and most interesting computer systems ever created. I have a risk-averse friend working for Google in Pittsburgh and he wouldn't leave for anything.
Not a shred of evidence in that article.
Next to the email area in user profiles, add a checkbox for display/don't display email in profile.

If the user enables this option, their email address is shown as an image (or otherwise spam proofed) in their profile to other logged in users.
I'm going to offer an alternate point of view from some of the other comments (I'm a programmer and am studying CS in college).

Do you think if you gave programming an honest shot, you'd sincerely like it? If the answer is "no", then forget it... don't learn how to program. Instead, find a programmer who likes your ideas and is willing to implement them for you, as an equal partner. This may be tough to find, but that's what you have to do.

Ideas have tons of value. In my opinion, ideas are insanely important. The best-engineered, slickest, cutting-edge application isn't going to make a flipping cent unless the user-facing features add value. And these features can be formed from ideas that ANYONE has - not just programmers. Don't think that you have to be a programmer to have great ideas; that's utter bullshit.

That being said, I think you do need to know your way around technology, because as a lot of people say you need to know the options; what is feasible, what is not feasible; what powers and raw functionalities you have at your disposal. Read Wikipedia articles about things like AJAX, server-side computing, search algorithms, social computing, etc. Watch Google Tech Talks about whatever sounds cool to you. Try to figure out what the current state of technology is - in terms of functionality and capabilities - across the CS/software board. You don't need to be a programmer to do this. But don't struggle through concepts that you find boring; read about stuff that seems cool and interesting.

The bottom line is, do what you love, period. Yeah it's cliche. But if you take up an activity because you care about the end result, and not about the journey, you're going to end up frustrated and will probably just give up. Whatever you're passionate about, do just that, and find someone else who's passionate about the rest to work with you.

But you should give programming an honest shot anyway, to find out if you like it. It's cool stuff.
Same here! especially when your in the zone churning out code faster than Eminem can bust a rhyme. I love it when that happens and really hate it when someone pokes in and requests some idiotic update form so that your boss/manager can feel better about himself....
Okay. It should now pick up your timezone via js. Unfortunately right now you won't notice it until the second request. I could have js refresh the page when it detects that the tz needs to be set/changed, but I don't want to do that until I am totally certain it cannot end up in an infinite refresh loop.
Re: Digg was created by non-hackers. Not true.

I am not sure if you have heard of digg's other co-founder Jay Adelson (http://www.spock.com/Jay-Adelson). Jay started Equinix, that does require some technical skill
Surprised to see Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" missing from his list - it's usually the first book I recommend for an overview that puts the others into perspective.
TRAC's my current favorite.

Too all the people using comments in the code and the like, that's very good when you're a 1-2 person team, but when you (hopefully) have more coders, possibly QA people and (god forbid) customers who complain about stuff that doesn't work well, you'd better switch to something that's more manageable.
Startup Wiki, sponsored by Y Combinator, powered by Infogami
Perhaps this could be resurrected using some off the shelf wiki software? Or an amazing minimalist equivalent written in Arc, if you'd prefer.
Kevin Rose hired an offshore programmer to write the php for Digg...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45073

Welcome to news.ycombinator, you'll like it much more here after you start drinking the Kool Aid.
You've just stumbled onto the reason that big companies take some many more people and so much more time than startups to solve a given problem - they don't (and can't) allow themselves to ignore the extra information and its complicated byproducts.
Nevertheless these cos invariably started out small by solving one significant problem in a great way while overlooking all those other dimensions.
In short, try to evaluate whether the extra information is truly a significant part of the core problem you set out to solve. If it isn't, postpone the solution. If you succeed based on your core solution you can worry about it later, when you'll have plenty of time and money to do so.
Michael Eisner 2.0 Will See You Now
Old school Facebook interview.
Linux user told he must use windows
just to give encouragement to all budding hackers out there...Take a simple idea, execute well, and have belief
Paul,

There is also another issue that seems to be overlooked, people create their own disruption. When I wrote about Gloria Mark's finding on working spheres ( http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com/2006/07/designing-collabora... ) I was surprised of that finding as it would seem counterproductive to the need to having to load up the "code" in the brain's RAM. Another explanation is that what she described is a typical cubicle/large organization workflow that would be counterproduictive to the Hacker's brain (replace hacker by researcher and you have the same symptoms).

Igor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory
If you build it, they will come: Google sees big boost in mobile traffic
Well, I was going to mention http://www.shoutfit.com .. but they appear down.
Try the Firebug 'inspect' button and then hovering/clicking in the source And CSS panels. Shows box model, computed CSS, allows live edits, and more.
"... The big PIA is time-syncing in with where you are at the moment ..."

Though I was thinking this fails if your machine has the wrong time.

"... It should now pick up your timezone via js ..."

and you can use this to check against user preferences in TZ. I'll be checking the src how you do this. Difficult to find out how?
Could The GPhone Be Nigh?
If people want to use Now Form A Band to name their startups, I'm absolutely fine with that.

http://www.nowformaband.com/
Pingdom: Offering 1 year free service
GotoSSH.com - A Web Based SSH client
https is not supported at news.yc
Sync 37 Signals' Highrise with Address Book
I was on a first date the other week and was explaining some of my ideas and the lady I was with nearly wet herself with excitement telling me about a webapp she'd love to have. After thinking about it and asking a few other women I know, I'm going to start working on it and apply to YC with it.

Most every idea I came up with seems like someone else has already done. This one... I spent two days searching and found nothing comparable.
Yes, you did. How? I don't spot any 1s turning into 2s..

Thanks.
MocoSpace Has Strong Growth; Race To Be MySpace For Mobile
Subprime Fallout Could Help Venture Capitalists
I must say I recognice all the elements here and I have been working almost exact this way since I started in 1982. I will say the key element is thinking in visual terms, or to visualize the problem and solution. However, just a tip - I discovered two useful tools that helps me now that my memory is getting weaker (from the age? :) ). A dictaphone and a white-board, The dictaphone allows me to record ideas, snippets, reminders and such, even pratice presentations. This is very useful as I don't have to write it down anywhere. I also use a white-board to draw either bigger lines to confirm my idea, or write down details to have them displayed in front of me at all time so that I don't forget important, but perhaps subtle parts. Just my 2 cents. Thanks to mr. Graham for an excellent essay!
Rise of the wikicrats
Sun's ticker symbol: SUNW -&gt; JAVA
Why would this site need to use SSL? Everything you post is public anyway.
Why google is not giving up google video ?
Why google still wants to continue with google video even after acquiring youtube ?
Questions like that sometimes keep me up at night. There are so many things I'd like to do in life, but not nearly enough time to learn how to do them all.
Nice post. I'd just say that the best way to learn what options are available is probably not studying like a programmer would on Wikipedia or tech talks. The best way for a non-programmer to do this is to find pieces of other technology and say to their hacker founder "Let's do X like that!".
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46023
He did farm out the work to a random person on ELance (for $2k), his name is Owen Byrne. But he's a Canadian I think, so maybe "nearshore" would be more accurate.

http://www.elance.com/p/corporate/community/resource-center/...
Why Applications Suck (Part 1)
According to what statistic? If you mean population count that's not very significant. There's more males under 65 than females in the US/UK. I'd also bet men use the internet disproportionately more.
Foggy memory, but either the CIA or KGB embedded tiny prisms in embassy window(s) so it was easy to capture the reflection. Without the prism it seems like this would be a real pain.

Here's another awesome way to pick up sound covertly: http://www.nsa.gov/museum/museu00029.cfm

I'd love to see some instructions how to do that easily. I'd love to try it.
First it was the "we are the dot in dotcom", now this :(.
MorphThing: Online Face and Picture Morphing
I think some high-class programmers don't really need to rewrite code to understand the system or to make changes in it. High-class programmers usually put minimal effort to achieve maximum result.
Facebook = Platform + Graph + Feed. It's that Simple.
Scoble: Twitter etc are the next email
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,280 for "when i worked at denny's"
I don't know Lisp, but I know SAS; are my macros Macros?
I have been wondering this for quite a while; I write a lot of SAS both for my dissertation and my research assistant duties. As a language it is a very strange beast (For example there are at least three if-then syntaxes (data if, matrix if, macro if, and assuming SQL has an if that's four, at least that I've found so far)). It has a "macro facility" which I will do my best to describe given my meager CS vocabulary. A SAS program is interpreted, not compiled, but if a & character is encountered, the program passes to a pre-compiler of sorts and & are translated into code and then interpreted. If && are encountered, they resolve to & and then a second pass with the pre-compiler is run, and so on. I've attached a code snippet below; This takes a data set and divides it into many datasets, one for each unique value in listdataset (I use this to change a comprehensive stock-returns dataset into aapl,goog,etc. returns databases) So, for the first iteration of the loop, dat_&&temp&k. resolves to dat_&temp1. which resolves in the second pre-compile to dat_goog or whatever temp1 was set to by
call symput('temp'||left(_n_), tempvar);

So, in just a few lines of macro code I can generate volumes of interpreted code. Does this make SAS a dialect of Lisp, or is the "macro facility" something else entirely?

%macro partition(listdataset,dataset, varinquotes, var1, var2, obs);
data &listdataset.;
set &listdataset.;
tempvar = trim(left(&var1.));
call symput('temp'||left(_n_), tempvar);
run;
%do k = 1 %to &obs.;
data dat_&&temp&k.;
set &dataset.;
if &var2.= "&&temp&k.";
run;

%end;
%mend partition;
How bizarre. Java is (however widely deployed or well engineered) passe at this point. Why try to completely associate with something that was hot 10 years ago?
Hilarious Geeky song - Finite Simple Group of Order Two
Hilarious.
Microsoft, of course, copied Helvetica (as Arial) to distribute with their OS.
Well, I think that a webapp should be suited for anyone unless it was created for a specific group of people.
About women...
I'm a man, and as any man should know, It's almost impossible to understand a woman, so asking a lot of women about your new project sounds like a good Idea to me.
Microsoft's oh, only 23 years older than Google...
Changes to Yahoo Video on the Way
Smart Scene Carving resizes images without distortion (new algorithm, presented at Siggraph)
For those who prefer youtube to see the Siggraph video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFCV2spKtg&eurl=http%3A%...
Conversation with KickApps SVP, Michael Chin
One missing point: preparation

I've been trying to get into a small program I need to write and am a bit stuck. After glancing at the (great) list in the article and realizing I can roughly control most of those elements, I think 'now why am I still stuck'? Oh I need to get this data structure from X, how to call that sub element from Y. Grunt work, yet details that easily fit into gaps between all the other various day to day distractions. So get all the junk together before that 12-36 hour marathon.
For presidential candidates in Silicon Valley, the place to be is the Googleplex
"I'll eat my hat if that isn't Einstein" (Einstein as seen by another scientist, Norbert Wiener)
Stretching crystals promises flexible colour displays
Great resource for some skillset learning:

http://ocw.mit.edu
Twitter's Evan Williams: A Unified Theory of Startup Success
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1004775

Woman users exceed men, and the gap is growing.
Fuel for thought
So what you are saying is that you are having a hard time understanding women's needs? ;-)

Since you asked, our company is in stealth mode on a product geared specifically for women (not a shopping, dating/rating, community or gossip site).. each demographic has their special needs, we're attempting to address those needs..

I do agree that a web app should be built for anyone. We are building in flexibility, for example, for the significant other of a female to gain value from the app as well..
"You can too" is the most important sentence in above post. Remember it.
Teaching's a subject close to my heart so I appreciated the points on good teaching. I think an underlying characteristic of high standards and passion is an actual insight into the subject. One of the most valuable things a teacher can provide other than an a quality assessment is a critical understanding of the student's work.

Teachers of the younger grades are actually quite good at this, and can gain quite a lot of insight into the childs mental model and development from their work. I guess it's easier because the work is less original at that age.
Most of this appears to be old coder wisdom and I fully agree with it. However, there is one point I am at odds with. I dislike code ownership and I think a small team of good people should be encouraged to review and rewrite any portion of the system they deem needs it. As Paul suggests, rewriting is core to understanding. Allowing and encouraging team members to rewrite improves both understanding and code. I realize this isn't old coder wisdom but I believe it is critical to making a small team behave more closely to the ideal of a single programmer.

-sdk
I used to work christmas week at a men's clothing store..

90% of our customers were women, even though we didn't sell women's clothing at all.
> Don't think that you have to be a programmer to have great ideas; that's utter bullshit.

While I wouldn't say that you have to be a programmer to have good tech startup ideas, I wouldn't say that it's completely false either. Empirically there's a clear trend: most of the most successful startups were led initially by hackers. (And the most notorious flameouts mostly weren't.) It makes sense that people who understand a medium will have the best ideas for what to do with it.
The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson has some good studies on brainstorming in groups. He cites studies that say that the #1 barrier to innovation in brainstorming is 'blocking'. Blocking occurs when one person interrupts others, mid-idea. So in order to get the combination of good ideas without blocking, all one needs to do is have a piece of paper per participant, and then one extra piece in the center of a table. Then each participant just writes down one idea (the idea should be on a focused cause ie ideas on fighting spam) and then exchanges his paper with the one in the middle. Then as a participant reads his new sheet, he tries to improve on the idea(s) that are already on the paper before adding a brand new idea.

I've tried this and it works for us.
a computer in every kitchen!
Sex, shopping and thinking pink (Men's and women's brains are different)
Brett,

Here's a suggestion for non-daily chains: say I want to work out twice a week. I can set that property (somehow) in the chain name, and when I work out on Monday and market it on the calendar on Monday, it will have mon-wed marked off. Obviously, there's a problem with fractions, but it should work.
World Bank study shows "what countries need to do to create wealth"
Personally he is simple, direct, unaffected and rather winning. His enormous intellectual energy, his clear vision and sense of physical reality, and his enthusiasm strike the most casual observer. He is aware of his great position, but not in the least conceited. He does not expect relativity in its present form to last many decades, and hopes that further work will soon go beyond it.

A good example of how received opinions can effect our assessments of people. Had Einstein been an important but un-famous scientist, no one would ever write shmaltz like that about him on a casual meeting.
MySpace on Facebook
Corportate espionage or admission of a better platform? 185 Myspacer employees use facebook...probably over 60% of their employees...
JavaME is not passe. It is still the most widely adopted cross-platform on-deck mobile phone environment and is continuing to grow. Sun is also really pushing the upcoming JavaFX, which is the successor to JavaME. This is not old stuff.
I was in the same position as you literally two months ago. Since then, I've brushed up on HTML, learned CSS and Javascript (somewhat), and am learning Ruby on/for Rails. In retrospect, I would learn RoR concurrently with the others.

I would definitely advise you to learn some programming, since even if you find a partner, he/she may not have the same drive or take on problems that you do. Knowing a little bit about hacking, even as an amateur, will enable you to go further than you would otherwise.
The Next Email - Twitter
Coding is a lifestyle. You can learn how to code. Anyone can. But by the time you have learned enough to build your idea, it will have become obsolete. get a co-founder maybe or hire a firm to do the work for you and take it from there. You are less likely to succeed, but at least you will not sit down some day and say "I should have tried". Take it from a suit.
hahaha, nice one.
I can recommend you another hilarious song video, tell me if you liked it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
I'm not sure this is a great comparison. Many of the holders of subprime mortgage securities were mutual, hedge, and pension funds that focused on these securities by choice or by law. Even if they wanted to switch their investments to tech, it's a totally unrelated area in which many of these firms have zero expertise. Finally, many pension funds and mutual funds are required to hold securities with a certain credit rating... I imagine it's fairly rare to find new tech companies with investment-grade credit.

To be sure, there are going to be some investors pulling their money out of subprime and looking in other places. But tech is just one of those places. You could just as easily say that the subprime collapse will help Japanese equities or European corporate bonds.
It only sounds harsh because of the language used, and then only to people who associate failure and rejection with finality and personal worth. Often, it is easier to simply use different language than it is try to rewrite a person's internal grammar.

When I applied to Y Combinator, and was not accepted, I considered it an objective not met. I didn't think of it as failure, I didn't think of it as rejection. I simply made a decision about what I was going to do next.

If you think in terms of rejection and failure, it will be difficult to pick yourself up and try again, unless the semantics you attach to those words do not include notions of finality and personal worth.
You need to get out some more kid, seriously. When you're out of mom's basement, walk around the corner, get a job, and you'll witness first-hand, java's remarkable penetration. Obviously, this doesn't speak for the language's effectiveness.
Please List This Corp on the Stock Exchange

(...right about this time, some shithead will be drawing a fat fucking line, over the precis on our business plan...)
jQuery 1.1.4 Released with Impressive Speed Improvements
Real World Linguistics (The Scientific Study of Language)
Mark Cuban: The internet is 'dead and boring'
No it's not old stuff, and my original post mentioned Java's strengths. My point, however, is more towards marketing. As far as I'm concerned Sun is interesting now due to their innovation in other areas--Solaris, ZFS, Niagra, and "green" datacenters. Java just isn't all that cool anymore.
Disregarding the borderline ad hominem attack here, I'd suggest you misunderstood my post. I actually mention that Java has huge penetration--I just don't think associating a company with a $17B market cap to a programming language (which I contend is a bit boring at this point) is all that cool.
A great teacher makes the complex simple.
A great teacher inspires students first, provokes them to think second, and lastly imparts information!
I don't think Mark knows how to make a point without making a polarizing comment. Of course, it is one of the reasons he is famous, so whether his off-the-cuff remarks help him or hurt him is open to interpretation.
Nearshore is also wrong because there isn't a shore between Canada and the US. The term is "outsourcing" to anyone in the US and Canada. If it's to another continent, then it's "offshoring."
That is a good deal. I'll use that in the future. I'd say there's only say, a 20% chance I'd want to use that name, and then there's only say a 30% chance I'll do this idea, so I'm not sure if I'll buy it just yet.