skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What if there is no way to perceive reality? At best we can perceive our own reality, but other people's realities will probably differ. So that reality approach might simply fall short of realities. I mean it doesn't give us a way to solve problems, because individual realities might have too many discrepancies to be resolved by pure logic alone.

The only way it could work is with the omniscient super computer that understands all of our individual realities and always choses the optimum common dominator. Not sure if we want that, though.
You are debating nothing here. "Perfectly calculated and optimal decision" versus "whim" falls on a continuum. They try to evaluate the applications and interviewees very quickly. This results in some less than optimal decisions. Still, it's too much to call their decision making progress a whim, because there is much more to it than completely arbitrary choice.

I wish they devoted more time to the decision making process, because I remain convinced that our outcome with YC would have been much different with a 1 hour interview instead of a 15 minute interview. The seedcamp interview process is orders of magnitude better and more fair from a founder's perspective.
Why don't you try to implement it nativeley for Firefox?
That and whether you're more comfortable using Python or Ruby.
What about Pylons?
What counts as not dying? If you drop the initial idea and start work on a very different one does that also count as dying?
> Still, it's too much to call their decision making progress a whim, because there is much more to it than completely arbitrary choice.

I didn't say the process was completely arbitrary or only whim. I said not to leave your fate up to someone else's whim -- which is probably what it comes down to for the group of "maybes". Whim is generally the make-it-or-break-it deciding factor. And when there are more unknowns -- as with applicants who lack experience, or lack a demo -- it plays an increasingly larger role.

> I wish they devoted more time to the decision making process, because I remain convinced that our outcome with YC would have been much different with a 1 hour interview instead of a 15 minute interview.

You're essentially saying now that YC lacked solid reasons for making their decision because the process is too brief. I agree. They don't have that much information, and they don't spend that much time on it. They make a call one way or the other and then go on to the next applicant.

> The seedcamp interview process is orders of magnitude better and more fair from a founder's perspective.

Which is to say, it is less based on whim than YC.

Edit: And one more thing -- your chances are always better if they like you personally, and almost always zero if they don't. That is why whim plays a big part in any human relationship, and investing is no exception. If they like you enough, that is often all it takes. I've heard and read interviews with VCs that go like this: I didn't understand what they were talking about, but I didn't care, I said, "I like you guys, here's some money, now go build it."
I read lot's of biographies (of self made rich pepople). Almost every single one finishes at least one chapter (or book) with "... but don't give up!".

PG, you just scored.
Yes, but both are widely considered inferior to Visual Forth ++.
I went for rails myself, and agree about Mongrel. It seems like the Rails guys are all anxious to throw the Apache baby out with the bathwater, and spend a lot of time fooling around with dodgy ways of doing things.

For now, I use the mod_fcgid Apache module, and it seems to work ok for what I need.
Cory Doctorow defends Scribd
I believe another part of it has to do with the cost of incorporation. In most places in the US, you can do it yourself for under $100. Comparatively, in most of Europe, it costs between $2,000 and $10,000 to form a company.

Also, with America's long standing tradition of entrepreneurship comes easy money for financing a new venture. In Europe, the spirit isn't there so to speak, so I assume the money would likewise be harder to come by.

I don't know anything about European law. Are companies in Europe afforded the same rights as in the US?
American's love David and Europeans love Goliath.

The British believed in their Empire. They believed that it was right to put Squash courts and Polo fields in far flung countries. They believed that Britishness was the most natural state of man. The French, Russians and eventually the Germans felt the same way about themselves, only more so and less sucessfully. These empires were Goliaths and their people were proud of them.

The US was the first major colony to successfully break free from the Brits. The most formidable military force ever deployed sailed into the East River and bore down on a bunch of un-uniformed barefoot rabble representing our (at that time) pathetic revolution. Yet somehow we won. That picture was chopped up and burned into the DNA of every American. We re-live it when Bruce Willis crawls through air-ducts and elevator shafts to outwit German terrorists. And again when he leads his band of blue collar drillers to blow up a merciless asteriod. And his goals are simple too. Bruce just wants to get home in time for dinner whereas James Bond is "keeping the British end up." Americans are wary of higher causes which makes them distrust things bigger than themselves.

It's everywhere in this country, Big is bad and small is good. We hate Wallmart, Microsoft, Nike and Exxon. Nevermind that Target, Adobe, Reebok and Shell are doing the exact same thing as their bigger counterparts. They're not big so we can't hate them. The only thing that will "kill" Google (IBM / MS style) will be bigness. We will turn against them once they become Goliath.

Our people (formerly your people) banded together way back then and forged our ideals in violent reaction against bigness. And so it's been ever since. We were the 12th biggest army just before WWII and few thought we would outlast the Soviets. But once the Soviet Empire fell we became Goliath and we have hated ourselves ever since. The Brits and Russians in their prime would have no problem with Iraq. The Russians would roll in and kill everyone and the Brits would pit the Sunnis against the Shias and colonize what's left. We have gone in half cocked and we don't truely believe that it's our place to tell other people how to live. It is cruely ironic that we may have to sail back across the pond and ask our British cousins how we can best play the part of Goliath.

This is all a long way of saying that revering startups is just natural to us. It's what we've always done and for better or worse, it's all we know. I'm actually not sure why they were ever called startups. Upstarts is way more fitting...
Pylons is deserving of attention. There is a small comparison of Django and Pylons here [http://wiki.pylonshq.com/display/pylonscookbook/Concepts+of+...].

I'm playing around with Pylons and have been impressed so far. The whole approach strikes me as more of a hackers framework; less magic, more flexible, extensible. Though the docs need a little work, and the community isn't as big as Django yet, Pylons seems to be blossoming into quite an excellent framework.
So do I. When I first found them I was impressed, it's a wonderful service. I'm a little worried by the copyright issues. But well, for the music industry it's time to realize that their old business plans work no more today.
I agree with the first two paragraphs, but not the rest of it. Somewhere in US history, things changed. The average American is clearly accepting, if not loving, of Walmart and other big companies, otherwise they would not be the juggernauts they are today. There would not be over 3800 Walmarts in the USA alone if we loved small and hated big.
String, of course.
Pace of Innovation for Entrepreneurs
The high fences and floodlights make the place look like a prison camp.
We have a love hate relationship w/ our captains of industry. We glorify their rise and then sue them into a corner and call them robber barrons when they get too big. I would say walmart is reaching its tipping point. MS has passed it and spends most of their revenues on lawyers. Walmart is close behind. As of now they get sued every 5 minutes.
Out of curiosity, where have you been looking and what would you expect from people if they joined you? Is it a part time thing?

(You have an interesting looking product there so I think you could do well out of it if you get it going)
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs [SubGenius] of course.
Microsoft Launches Art Of Office - Mac Users Pissed
Korea's incubator, Litmus, looks familiar
This may not be integrated enough for some, but those people can just loosen the knot, pull a little, and retie for tighter integration.
Reminds me of the 16MP, $25,000 Holga:

http://www.holgadigital.com/blog_2/about.html
R5RS hygienic macros qualify as LISP goodness, but a lot of Scheme implementations also implement defmacro (like CL) and/or syntax-case.

Use of macros makes the code reflect the programmer's thinking about the problem domain. Whether this is readable or not depends on the programmer.
Why I went to South America to incubate my startup
Jonathan Schwartz's on Sun's ticker symbol change to JAVA
Let's see a huge international software company do that!
How long till Google becomes Goliath?
I think that's sufficiently explained by noting bigness makes you more worth suing, and the associated power and high stakes tempt you to do stuff that deserves suing.
Wow, this has some serious weight:

"I am a former Director of SFWA"

"SFWA has exposed itself to tremendous legal liability."
N.B. The cost ranges given are from December, 1995.
Scheme has a way of defining macros that's supposed to be better than old-fashioned defmacro. These "hygienic macros" seemed to a lot of people (though not me) to be a good idea when they were invented. They got into the Scheme standard then. I think people don't like them so much now, but once something gets into a standard it's impossible to get it out.

However (a) all the Scheme implementations I know of have implemented classic defmacro macros as well, and (b) if one hadn't, you could easily write it yourself. So in practice there's not much of a decision to make.

The Arc implementation you're using to read this is written on top of Scheme. Currently Mzscheme.
Not usually. But it can be if the initial idea was good and the new one is bad.
Greenpeace Gets It Right: More Wind Power In Erie A Good Idea
Meat the top cause of global warming?
Noise of modern life blamed for thousands of heart deaths
Rails looks to be more DRY than Django. Though I'm on Rails and don't really use Django.
> in anticipation of a tiny chance to be wealthy

It isn't tiny in the case of Octopart or the audience I was addressing. They've all been selected out of a much larger pool. For them the odds might be as high as 50%.
If he wants to improve Sun's performance, he needs to change some of their fundamentals. He won't change anything by changing a superficiality. The fact they're pushing this silliness so hard and the fact that he's writing so much about it shows how deeply flawed Sun really is.
Only if you assume that you can't succeed unless you get funded by YC, which is rather flattering us.
I'm not convinced that there are fundamental differences between attitudes in the US and Europe or at least Britain. The industrial revolution began in Britain and was a time of immense innovation and entrepreneurism. Us Brits still point to that as an example of our inherent entrepreneurial spirit however I reluctantly feel compelled to pour cold water on that idea. I think that period in our history could have taken place in any country given the same economic, educational and scientific conditions etc.

So my point is basically that you can find people with the right attitude anywhere. But that also is kind of the problem; unlike in the US, we don't have a Silicon Valley to gravitate towards. Some entrepreneurial people gravitate towards London but unlike Silicon Valley every other person you meet isn't going to be a budding empire builder. So in conclusion, they are there but you'll just going to have to look that much harder to find them.
Entrepreneur's Toolkit
I just created a page that lists services that every entrepreneur should know about. It's called the 'Entrepreneur's Toolkit'...
Google Maps Nighttime
That's a good idea. I didn't think of it.
This article is obviously poorly researched and the writing is extremely sloppy.
Experimentation: on the path for innovation
The role of experimentation in the innovation process.
Grid Sequencers
What a convenient meta-narrative...
Enough with the Boston Start-up Inferiority Complex
Boston is tied with San Jose in Q2 for total number of venture-backed IPOs.
Wow. Those options are bleak. I'd certainly learn more JS in the process, but it wouldn't be reusable or scalable.
Yahoo Tests A Facebook/LinkedIn Contender
It seems fun! I want one :)

Mainly I want to try that new kind of interface, well copied from monome to a certain extent.
A multi-touch screen could do the job. I look forward to such devices becoming more popular.
Got Arachnophobia? Here's Your Worst Nightmare
I wish I could agree with this, but as someone who switches back and forth between the two every year, Boston is way behind.
Instant Word Search : Something I wrote for fun
Can't tell if you're sarcastic or not :-/.
Thanks for the info! I learned Scheme with a rather obscure implementation (LMU Scheme, from my university), so I wasn't aware of the Macro capabilities of Scheme. Edit: I just checked, LMU Scheme is based on R4RS and indeed has no Macros.
Man Fired Thanks to GPS Tracking
It is silly, really. But I just thought I'll share anyway.
> Am I worried that the Java platform may not last forever (should you put it on your license plate :-) ? No. It's the single most pervasive technology Sun has ever invented - and the most valuable brand we've ever built. It's one of the few technologies that may outlast the century.

I have nightmares about this sort of thing.
That's what I call service, if only I had a Blackberry... :)
Not sure what the point is, but it sure looks pretty!
In my view, it's a pretty useless list, it contains a total of 10 links, 4 of which are NYC specific.
Cool. Do you think big companies could do this if they wanted to? All it involves is having technically proficient customer service representatives, or at least reps that can quickly query engineers for help. But maybe there's just no incentive.
Anywhere.fm is really cool...but how do they make money? That's what I'm not really understanding. I don't see any ads or anything...
Does zAgile make any money? The product page on their website has a scant two paras and no screenshots.

I'm much more inclined to take the advice of people who have made something work...
Americans do hate WalMart. But they still shop there.
Check out South Korea and North Korea. Yikes, what a difference.
From what I've read and seen in the Valley and Boston, I agree 100% with you - but that's why I thought it was interesting to put it up here for discussion.
Hygienic macros do seem to be a good idea: "Hygienic macros are macros whose expansion is guaranteed not to cause collisions with existing symbol definitions." (from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienic_macro)

What are the disadvantages? Is there any reason to dislike defining syntax rules?
Look for someone with a cause other than helping the environment when they say "X is a big cause of hurting the environment".

For the practical minded, the best thing you can do to help the environment is to move to a place where you don't need much AC or much heating, but the latter matters more. Good Insulation do much more than almost anything else to decrease your footprint, but it isn't sexy and you can't show it off to the Jones next door.

I look forward to hearing what Woz has to say, now that he's on his quest for efficient homes.
Not so instant for me :-P
How does karma work?
How does the karma and points system on this site work? I can't figure it out. Do people with more karma generate more points per vote? How are the points generated, I've seen some comments which are worth 17 points, where does that number come from?
Wind power scales linearly with land used. There is nothing environmentally friendly about significantly greater land-use for energy output. I'm surprised how rarely this is observed.
I forgot to mention this: Americans are either descendents of risk takers or risk takers themselves (if they are immigrants). I've forgotten the article/research but even in horrible times of famine, economic disaster, or war; for some reason very few people actually leave their country. I think less than 30%. I'm willing to bet that the US probably has taken in a huge majority of the people that were willing to take a risk in a place where they know little of (including the native language) for greater opportunity...
Macros produce kickass code: http://neverfriday.com/blog/?p=10#more-10

If I didn't create a string-case= macro, I would have to write the final expression over and over again. With multiple string-case matches I would have to write string=? many many times:

(cond ((or (string=? "hello" my-string)
(string=? "world" my-string))
(print "match")))

To do that with the string-case= macro:

(string-case= my-string
(("hello" "world")
(print "match")))

Saves quite a bit of typing and now I have a good example of why macros are good to have around :D

edit: formatting ftw.
One reason I've heard is that sometimes you actually want those collisions (I haven't come across a good example though - anyone know of one?).

For me the reason is just that defmacro is easier to read.
Also, they appear to have moved back to the US. Based in San Fran...hey, some YCombinator guys should go and see if they're still alive :P
I think I read recently that the VC money invested in Boston-area is about 1/4th that of Silicon Valley. (For "IT" tech, not biotech.)

I like how Scott Kirsner, Globe reporter, compared it to the Red Sox vs. Yankees rivarly. The Sox have a huge budget compared to most teams, except the Yankees. And while the Sox have a complex about the Yankees, the Yankees barely know their is a rivalry. Can't go wrong with Red Sox analogies ;-)
You are on the money dude, I have been using pylons for a while and it is much more usable than Django.
What are you designing? One might be better suited.
haha! It goes through my mind every day...
Actually SQL sucks and hence all wrappers suck too. The over-engineered SQLAlchemy sucks most. If you are python user you should find SQLAlchemy ugly.

As far as frameworks goes, for most deployments(not for all) I would suggest pylons over django.

Mako is very useful.
Use informal advisers to guide your startup
Building a company can be lonely work. One way to reduce your isolation and gain a wealth of knowledge is by forming an advisory committee. I've had advisory committees for two of the companies I've owned, and I've found them to bring experience, skills, contacts - and friendship.
here's one:

(defmacro aif (test then &optional else)
`(let ((it ,test))
(if it ,then ,else)))
Paul Graham's near-death experience
One example is the magical introduction of special variables. Here's "aif", implemented in PLT Scheme:

(require (lib "defmacro.ss"))

(define-macro (aif a b c)
`(let ((it ,a))
(if it ,b ,c)))

(aif (* 10 10) (+ it 1) 'oops) ==> 101

The "aif" form makes it so you don't have to create a temporary variable name first -- the temp var is just assumed to be named "it".

If you're thinking, "whatever, I don't need that" you are wrong. :) Somehow this turns into the most wonderful little line-saver. At my last company, we used it all over the place.
Logotrend 2007: Leaves
The fact that Viaweb happened to be at the mercy of its investors at that moment hardly meant it was worthless. In fact it generated lots of revenue for Yahoo. I believe roughly the same amount as Broadcast.com, which cost 100x as much.
Ask Steve #7 - How Do I Get Blog Attention?
Flying saucer 'nears US take-off'
I found the same. You must be using LIKE across the whole dataset?

Why not build a hash table with every two-letter combination as they keys and the index of every word containing that combination as the value? That should narrow down the number of words you have to search through for each query, and it could all be done in MySQL with a many-to-many relation.
Oooh, I gotta have one of these. Wonder if it will come out in the US...
Ah, of course - thanks!
Yup, I've used aif a lot, but had never got around to implementing it for myself and so hadn't made the connection with variable capture.
To be fair, the author's more arguing that Boston's not behind in the more traditional start scene. For YC stuff, the Valley seems much more willing to go in big on less mature and potentially less profitable companies. No IPO's have happened in the web 2.0 space, which demonstrates that his metric is blind to the sort of thing you care about most.
Having built something like this would help if you apply to YC. It doesn't take too much work, but shows you can make cool things.
This is a disadvantage of wind power? I always imagined that coal power scaled linearly with coal mined, and that nuclear power scaled linearly with waste produced. Please enlighten me.

For more detail on land use, see this page:

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_environment.html
The Yankees don't know there's a rivalry? You're kidding yourself. If you've been to a Sox/Yankees game in either Boston or the Bronx, you know the hate is mutual.
Simply Scheme (now a free ebook from UC Berkeley)
I use a text file (not db). I too thought that partitioning it would give a better performance. But profiler disagreed.

I use nearlyfreespeech.net, and they don't support FastCGI yet. Thats the bottleneck.

I am planning to try this in EC2... to see what happens.
From the article: "While it hopes to incorporate an integrated music store, it's eyeing a potentially more lucrative route - capturing a piece of the $20 bilion radio advertising industry."
In Scheme, the cases where one would use anaphoric IF can be handled using a COND clause with a "=>":

(cond ((assoc 'key collection)
=> (lambda (it) (do-something-with it)))
(else
(alternative)))

Alternatively, if you really wanted to create an AIF macro, you could use SYNTAX-RULES to create something that sugared up the above thusly:

(aif it (assoc 'key collection)
(do-something-with it)
(alternative))

Or you could, going outside the standard, use SYNTAX-CASE (ugh, in R6RS) or one of the other non R5RS approaches to macros e.g. syntactic closures[1] that don't throw out the macro hygiene baby with the occasional slight inconvenience bath-water.

I'm a bit of a reformed macrologist; if I get an idea for a cool macro, I try to see how far I can take a non-macrotic version and compare that to what the syntactically-sugared version would be like. Most of the time, I wind up not bothering with a macro. I put macros in the same category as EVAL: If you think you need to use a macro, think again.

[1]: (http://community.schemewiki.org/?syntactic-closures)
Aaron Swartz:  Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)
Eulisp, lisp dialect: lightweight and carefully designed like scheme, with object system like CL
Not that new... from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuLisp

"Language definition process first began in a meeting in 1985 in Paris and took a long time. The complete specification and a first implementation (interpreted-only) was available in 1990."

Anyone care to speculate on why it didn't take off?
Funny, because I just started reading On Lisp and it's right there, page 191. Thanks for the example.
Maybe they wouldn't have released it with the bug in the first place, having had access to that model to test on;-)

I actually appreciate the point, I'm just a cynic by nature.
Not even close to slice's price actually. They start at 99$ for a VPS, which is what we are talking about. Slice starts at 20$.