skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
1.9 Billion Words; Scribd Users Have A Lot To Say
360 Degree Holographic Display
If you had that much money, you could stage a takeover of Equatorial Guinea. Why settle for a town when you could have a country?
"... I guess this will cause ANOTHER Reddit rewrite. ..."

Interesting perspective I found on Coding Horror suggesting that it wasn't so much a language change as a change of platforms ~ http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000839.html
What are those, in the software world?

I can only think of projects that involve a lot of drudge work that nobody wants to do unless they're paid to. I suppose this includes most services. What else has to be done by a company?
I wouldn't dictate the style of architecture. It's grim when towns seem too much the product of one mind. I'd do something more YCish in spirit: find good people and let them do what they want.
Thanks for all the responses. Curiously, no-one suggested RoR (maybe with instiki) or django/pylons/etc. Why wouldn't one use these languages/frameworks, especially with e.g. RoR claiming 0.1x development time in some articles?
Google probably has to, for example.
It's also funny to think that everyone has a dream about "what if I had some plateau of wealth higher than the one I occupy now"
Infogami reloaded. It's pretty cool though. It's horribly broken in IE. It would be cool to create more complex page hierarchies.
Microwulf: A Personal, Portable Beowulf Cluster (Breaking the $100/GFLOP Barrier)
PG, this reminds me of a question I had a while ago. In your Silicon Valley essay, you mention in a footnote that one could reproduce SV with 30 of the right people. Who would those people be (or what kinds of people)? Angels like Ron Conway? VC's like Sequoia?
Then the currency is data ('upload', water), not the bandwidth (pipe), right?
I figured out the part about distractions, because I kept doing it to myself, and I KNEW it. When I was back at the University and had a crusher class I wanted to escape. I caught myself once, and had this little chat "hmm...why do you just HAVE to change the oil NOW?'
Now I'm being crushed alive in a startup and I know with absolute certainty that what I am doing is worth a hundred million, AND the only thing that will stop me is ME.
"Please tell us in one or two sentences something about each family member that shows a high level of ability."
Congrats guys.

What kind of increase in traffic do you see after a Mashable article?
"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

...but, planning in place of action is planning on failure.
startup/nerd drama! more, more, more! this is better than Perez Hilton!
Justin.tv is still hiring (join us in our beautiful SOMA office in SF)
Good for them. If you're pissing people off, you're probably doing something right.

The funny part is, for most people here, Aaron and Matt aren't reading your blog -- but you're reading theirs! This is like a Denial-Of-Service attack against their competition by inducing them to waste time they could be spending on their own startup instead reading about someone else's.

Id software was a master at this. Everyone was so busy playing Quake, Quake II, etc. that they weren't working on their own games. Did you know actual celebrities are horrible at recognizing other celebrities? They are too busy making movies to read celebrity gossip magazines.

Speaking of, I probably should get back to work!
If aaron wants to indulge let him please go ahed. But this post is so insincere when it gives the bit about users loving perfectionism that it makes me dizzy. Its either insincere or is delusional.I don't want to have anything to do with either.

PG wants to indulge with arc, he went ahed. But I don't remember him giving some insincere explanation.

I am now a strong believer in motherfucker's theory of insincerity http://atomicwang.org/motherfucker/Index/E06C66BF-E7D5-48FF-...
(sorry, but that what he calls himself)
In the ever-annoying stealth mode. Sigh.
Any software project, no matter how cool it seems, is at least 50% drudge work. I'd be willing to argue that the inverse-pseudo-pareto-principle applies... 20% of any non-trivial software project is fun, and the other 80% is drudge work.

Even certain open source projects require paid staff. The only reason FireFox exists is because the Mozilla foundation can pay programmers to work on the ugly parts.
If I could only pick 30 I'd want the people stuff emanates from. I'd probably choose mostly hacker-founders like Larry & Sergey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and so on. Steve Jobs. Maybe Bill Gates. I wouldn't have to pick investors; enough would follow.
Wow, that's my goal exactly. Well, technically I want a country. But I guess if I make enough to do that, you'll make enough from it to do a town.
You'd never want to restrict who'd live there overtly. But you could do it by more subtle means, like giving pedestrians and bicycles priority over cars, and mixing inexpensive buildings with expensive ones.
Equatorial Guinea is the perfect target for takeover. It has the second highest GDP per capita PPP adjusted in the world, yet the average citizen lives on less than a dollar a day because the evil dictator takes all the oil money. It's waiting to fall. Margaret Thatcher's son tried to stage a coup in 2005 and failed. MI6 and the CIA knew about the attempt and provided anecdotal support, they want Equatorial Guinea to have a new, western friendly leader.

Basically, Thatcher just didn't spend enough money. A billion in private defense contractors (mercenaries) would be plenty to take Equatorial Guinea with overwhelming force. The defenders might not even fire a shot.
A week is more than enough time to massage 50+ html files into whatever you were doing before. Just do it in a couple hours and take the rest of the week off.
One of these guys?
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjun00/mmbearp.html

IIRC from freshman biology, these guys go into suspended animation when they dry out. I guess that's the post liquidity reference.
ArtFlock.com: "Buy, Browse and Sell Art". Is a seedcamp startup a new Artix?
Wanted: technical co-founders for YC application and/or potential VC funding
Here's my situation:

I'm determined to start a company and I have a "big idea" (IMHO). When I've shared my concept and business model with my friends, I've received very positive feedback (from both technical and business points of view). Unfortunately I'm not your typical YC founder (I'm 36), and most of my friends are far more interested in a "job" than starting a company. Most have said they would love to join me (as an employee) if I had the funding.

I intend to submit an application for the YC winter program, but as a sole founder I understand my odds aren't the best they could be (and in general I suspect it's probably good to have a partner or two). Right now I'm concurrently working on the business plan, UI design and a functional prototype (I get bored working one aspect for too long (and as the concepts get more fleshed out, it seems like a more balanced way to work)).

Anyhow, I'm looking for one or two free electrons (highly skilled and productive people) to join me on my YC application and/or other VC funding. Without giving out too much information, I will say that it's a web based application (shocker eh?) with a heavy JavaScript component and a distributed server (linux) environment involving a message bus. Ideally one of the free electrons will know the ins and outs of the client side (JavaScript/HTML/CSS, page layout, page flow, graphics design). The other free electron would have a good grasp on distributed server architectures/IPC/networking, database interactions and optimizations, and programming skill in C/C++ and one of the following (in approximate order of preference): Perl, Ruby, Lisp, Python. I'm a bit nervous about giving out a large amount of ownership to an unknown person, but would be willing to consider some sort of vesting arrangement (any advice on how to approach this would appreciated as well). I'm willing to make this work with the right people.

Please contact me at: bruce.saunders at occamsoftware . com if interested.
That's funny, I was thinking today that you should found one of those micro-universities like Deep Springs. I'd imagine the town would end up being somewhat similar though.
Mine wasn't that bad, but it did involve me being told I had an apartment in Cambridge locked up, only to find less than two weeks before Y C began that I didn't.
Yes. I drew a picture of my dong and mailed it. Still waiting to hear back.
News immunity --all the news look the same to me
To temper dreams of robots:

There will be a lag in robots in the home before there is a boom. The problem is that manipulating an environment is harder than moving around in it, or even understanding it.

A Roomba can get around, but only the latest version has any idea where it is. Even if it did localization and mapping, it would just be a better vacuum cleaner. Applications available to robots that can move around and know where they are include surveillance, reconnaissance, tele-presence, and most importantly: automated driving. AutoBots will be huge, and soon.

But it will be a long time before robots make you drinks using the tools you use. A robot will sooner recognize my drink is a Gin & Tonic than make it.
Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges
Yes, Google is a service. But then again, Debian repositories are a service, as is Wikipedia, as is Usenet (although you said 'open source', I'm assuming your argument extends to donated effort in general). So there must be some other difficulty to Google.

There are high stakes, business wise, in web search. But then again, that was just as true for operating systems and web browsers. So cross that one too.

Google is resource intensive. Open source is good at providing manpower, but not so good at sustaining huge running costs of other type. But then again, Google started quite small, and I'd guess Wikipedia, Usenet or Debian need more resources than many small companies. So, is it only a matter of size? In any event, this doesn't apply to Aaron's new startup.

Anything else?
I think starting fresh makes sense. I've been thinking about how to start a country for a short while now. Here is how I'd do it:

1) Buy or find an island around the size of Manhattan. This shouldn't be too hard. Avoid areas too hot or too cold. Low or no population a plus.

2) Buy an insurance contract with a group like BlackWater. Publicly declare the terms: they help invade whatever country violates your new sovereignty. This should make starting a country less dangerous initially.

3) Flagrantly violate useless laws in other countries to attract business and freedom-minded people. Patent laws and IP limits would be ideal targets. This would be a pirate nation.

4) Establish a fiat currency with predictable supply growth indexed on a percentage of the previous year's growth in GDP. Make it available online and with an open trading system.

5) Fund any government expenditures through the increase in the money supply, described in #4. This is an unavoidable implicit tax, at a low rate. To stress the point: there would be no other taxes.

Initial conditions and trust would be hard to start with. It might require lots of money in the founder(s) to work well. But I think this could be a very nice environment.
Oooh - Brian Harvey. Brings up happy memories of CS60B; C, MIPS ASM, and the SPIM simulator. This guy is one of the best lecturers/speakers I know of.
OK, so that would prove that open source can get drudge work done, right? Or do you think 80% of open source work is sponsored by companies? For all I know, that might be the case, but are sponsored efforts any less open source?
The author of this site: http://www.bugbear.com/
Starting fresh makes much more sense if you're doing this out of idealism. As an investment, taking Equatorial Guinea is better (because of the oil).

Either way, don't forget the underwater fiber optic connection to an internet backbone.
> I realize this will sound naive, but maybe the linkage works in both directions. Maybe if you can arrange that we keep hearing from you, you won't die.

Or, maybe they stop communicating because they know they're going to die.

I love it when people take a statistic and try and "cheat" it.

For example: a report came out last year that statistically speaking most people that have dogs and cats have children that don't have allergies to dogs and cats. It may be that having dogs and cats around makes children not have the allergy. Or, since allergies to dogs and cats are hereditary, maybe only people that don't have the allergy get dogs and cats, and those people would be more likely to have children without the allergy.

That's how I feel about the "communicate you won't die" comment.
The sponsored efforts are indeed open source. However, the only reason the drudge work got done was because someone was paid to do it. People don't like doing crappy stuff if they aren't getting paid.
Agreed. It's a lot more embarrassing for a founder to email and say "Yeah, another week and we have no users or funding or motivation or new features or incremental improvements" than to just not respond.
It is as if someone took all the things that are gross about Java, CAML, and Smalltalk, and combined them into a single language.
That post about sincerity is interesting but exactly, completely wrong. He's completely reversed the entire cause effect relationship. I'll write a blog post as to why.
Google Earth's Hidden Surprise: A Flight Simulator
The writer makes assumptions that strike me as completely arbitrary in this article and I feel the need to comment.

The writer quotes a "law" which states that in order for a computer system to be balanced the hertz of the CPU, the bytes of RAM, and the bps of IO should be the same. I shrugged it off to an old quote taking in assumptions of the time in which it was penned. I continued to read, expecting that he was illustrating a point. Then I see:

"So using GigE as our interconnect, a perfectly balanced system would have 1 GHz CPUs, and 1 GB of RAM for each core."

How can one assume that the clock of the CPU has anything at all to do with the amount of ram or network IO for a "balanced" configuration? Is it 32b or 64b processor? How wide and fast is the front side bus? Does it use a minimal instruction set or a full featured IA style set. How long is the pipeline? In effect, how much work does it do per unit time? Is this not the real question?

Also, how much data can you store and read from RAM per unit time? This information seems at least equally as important for an evaluation of balance as the total amount of RAM available. And finally, what is the workload? Will the parameters of the computing workload not completely determine the optimal "balance" of hardware capabilities?

I am commenting here as a reality check on my own thoughts about this article. Am I missing something or is this guy totally off the mark with this "law" and computing balance equation?
If you can buy a season of episodes on DVD for about $40 and there are 24 episodes in a season that is close to $2 per episode. There is packaging and profit from the store so NBC does seem to be unreasonable in this case. Regardless there is content coming from everywhere and networks have a lot of competition, so even so a few will miss the content there will be so much content you wouldn't hardly know a few shows are available, rather then visiting hulu.com people will just buy some other show to watch.
Another gaucho here, class of '02. With my group, we would just drink the beer as we got it, no games or anything.
I can think of other reasons why people would do boring stuff. This is by no means an orthogonal breakdown!

- Militance: They believe in a cause and do some sacrifices to further it. Like translating software and docs into an obscure language. This can be done by zealots of the software, of the language, or both.

- Self-image (somewhat related to the above): After having completed the sexy parts, you care about the appearance of your project as a whole, so you fill in the boring parts.

- Pleasing users (somewhat related to the above): You get hooked in a virtuous feedback cycle with your users. Some things that would be boring in themselves get done in anticipation of the positive feedback.

- Competitiveness: a mix of the two above. You want to be the best at what you do, and the boring stuff offers opportunities to differentiate.

- Scratch a personal itch: I think many Linux device drivers get done because of this. Also most of the external bug reporting (and most of the business sponsorship.)

- The long tail of vocation: what is boring to most is probably someone's joy.

- Retribution: You love an open source product as an user, so you give back.

- Social acceptance: You want to become part of the community of contributors. You aren't qualified to do the hard stuff yet.

In MMOG's, lots of people volunteer for Game Masters, which is an euphemism for unpaid customer service. They do very boring, repetitive work for the benefit of a for-profit company that gives them absolutely nothing in return (indeed, it's legally dangerous to give them anything in return).

So don't underestimate people's ability to do drudge work for free.
Is this new digg?
Will Google release Google branded phone this year?
Google and Samsung are rumored to be building the phone, codenamed "Switch," Simeonov says and his posting includes what he claims is a leaked photo of the device.I say Google is just helping Samsung with Samsung product and they won't be labeled Google. What do you guys think?
Google and Samsung are rumored to be building the phone, codenamed "Switch," Simeonov says and his posting includes what he claims is a leaked photo of the device.
Flight Simulator hidden inside Google Earth
quick! to the INTERNET, in order to correct the misconceptions of others!

it never stops being tempting.
PG used to go by that in the early days of Reddit more too:

http://reddit.com/user/bugbear/
I think "holographic" is a bit of a misnomer. But that's splitting hairs -- it's still frikkin' dope.

That said, they've had a holographic video display sitting in the basement of the MIT Media Lab for close to two decades. I never understood why the world wasn't more excited about it. Guess it was a bit ahead of its time.

The holographic lathe was the coolest: http://www.media.mit.edu/spi/HHlathe.htm . You'd use this pen to shape a hologram of a cylinder, in real-time. The pen was a haptic interface, so you'd feel resistance as you "carved." Basically, you'd sculpt with light. Then you'd send your creation down the hall to the 3D printer.

I had the privilege of working in that lab for a little while. It was like living in the future.
I took CS61A from him freshman year, loved it, then TA'd it a couple years later (cause I needed my Scheme fix!).
If you decide to copy, double check your punctuation. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060806....
I could hear PG's voice and speech patterns while I was reading this one. I even "heard" the pauses for audience laughter and impact. Nicely done.
Desperation. Lack of security to any in the long haul, unless you make it big. The fire is always below your feet, here. Any given job sucks, until you can make your own, work on something you /want/ to work on and make it. Bleak, but that's behind my own attitude.
It's totally off the mark in terms of absolute numbers, especially when you take into account the huge variety of uses for a machine... my machine, for instance, isn't really bottlenecked by a 52mbps network connection (not to mention 4mbps internet), but I'd still like more than 3ghz dual core. A whitebox in a Google render farm probably WOULD be noticebly slower with 100 megabit compared to 1 gigabit on a MapReduce.

The thing is, though, the 'law' was created in the 60s, and it's stayed mostly order of magnitude correct since... so that's quite impressive in itself.
That's a good point. Are you guys looking to start a start up there? I'm currently looking at China and Singapore. But Japan may be third on my list. What's your email? :-)
"Once a product gets past the stage where it has glaring flaws, you start to get used to it, and gradually whatever features it happens to have become its identity." -- Hardest Lessons #2

Reddit certainly fell into that one big time. Digg has done a much better job at maintaining a fast development pace.
Maybe PayPal tried to get the opinion of the designer of the previous logo, but he was too busy finalizing his company's 1.65 billion dollar sale to Google.
I believe he took inspiration from this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television

I'll be brutally honest: Not cool. It's old and boring and not in the least difficult. The software is what would've taken a while to make, and even that would theoretically consist of little more that two for loops to scan through each frame of video and output it to the audio jack.
Who's With Gwyneth? The Google Guy
...And? Does it matter, really? A lot of people say it isn't really the idea that matters. It's execution. This guy would probably have done a lousy startup anyway.

What about Friendster? Didn't Abrams also clue into Social Networking before Facebook?
That's kind of a silly way to look at discourse. All discourse is basically someone trying to correct the misconceptions of others.
What would happen to a site like Facebook if Mark were to lose the ConnectU lawsuit, or to Greenspan if he were to take action?
i think his use of influential is a on a more personal note.
I don't think that million dollars can ever replace those years that you could have rather spent at school. Is money is everything Paul wants everyone to run after. Is there a place for passion for creating things without worrying about money, learning new stuff or just plain old play a better idea to spend your ONE life than to keep worrying about creating something that you would bag a big fat ass beurocratic giant to buy out? Paul seems to think his success is repeatable 50% of the times and looks like he won't hesitate to sacrifice schoole years of these kids for his part of million.
There's precedent for this. Excel 97 had a hidden flight simulator too.
Prank Starts 25 Years of Security Woes (AP story on "the first ever personal computer virus")
So the lesson is... investors decide who the winner will be.
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho Asserts he is not gay? - TvByDemand | Forums | General
Who Invented Facebook... and Who Cares?
This is going to be a hell of a flight simulator in ten years.
"Relive" Microsoft Windows from version 1.0 to Vista
Certain personalities tend to like extremes in that way as well.
Notifir.com Public Beta Launched - A Tool for Content Submitters
Anyone can sign up for free; however, a Digg.com account is needed. They have a Digg.com style voting system so that the community can decide which are the most important features to implement as well as suggest new features. Soon, they will support StumbleUpon.com, Reddit.com and Netscape.com.
It was Zuckerberg's brilliant marketing that made Facebook win, in my opinion.
For whatever reason I can't edit my comment above (is there a time limit?), but if anybody changes the above linked site so a big pic covers the 'edit' and 'history' buttons, or it redirects to another site, or whatever, you can get to the edit and history by going to http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/?m=edit or http://beta.jottit.com/8dw3p/?m=history.
You can only edit or delete comments for one hour after you post.
"Is there a place for passion for creating things without worrying about money, learning new stuff "

Funny you say that because every single founder I was with this summer had two things in common: they were passionate about what they were doing and they learned A LOT over the course of the three months.

Relax. If you dislike an individual, you can simply state it rather than using some twisted logic to express the same thing.
Playboy Magazine Interviews Google Pre-IPO (full text)
With regards to people working as Game Masters in MMOG's, I think it's mostly done for the feeling of godlike power.