skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this would work so much better in Second Life or other "universes" like it. If you haven't tried SL, do, and go to a concert, for example. It just feels different to be somewhere in SL, you are much more involved than on a web page. Also, is your own homepage really a place you go to to feel at home? I think we create web pages mostly to present ourselves to other people. In second life, on the other hand, people are creating homes for themselves just to hang out there and feel good. So I think a place like that would be much more suited for memorials.

Also, one question pops up: do you think people would rather create a memorial on a graveyard, or in some private place? The graveyard might be good because it makes you feel less alone, but technically it isn't really necessary.
Web Startups and the Lying Liars that Lie About Them
I think there's something to be said for being informed and a bit well-rounded. Bill Joy may be one of the greatest C hackers of all time, but his NerdTV interview was one of the most boring things I've ever watched.

I think today it is vital for hackers to stay informed because the investors are also far more sophisticated and you need relevant information to help you get what you want. If all you want to do all day is write code, then unrelated news that doesn't expand your thinking is a waste of time. However, in that case you need a co-founder who does keep on top of everything and will represent your interests as strongly as you would have.

Besides that, I can't even count how many all-night debugging sessions were a product of the creeping IQ drop and would have taken all of 20 minutes the next day on normal sleep.
Problems with the current state of online discussion and argument
> If you watch the video closely the story is a little different from that.

I watched it several times. Your summary doesn't seem to conflict with my post... However, it also doesn't seem to quite fit what they said.

> The hired management forced Sandy out by threatening to quit en masse if she didn't leave.

Don Valentine:

"Seven vice presidents of Cisco Systems showed up in my office. We had a reasonably civil meeting in our conference room, the outcome of which was a very simple alternative: Either I relented -- and allowed the President to fire Sandy Lerner -- or they, all seven, would quit."

> I got the impression that Don Valentine actually wished she could have stayed.

Sandy Lerner:
"Don's opening words to me, you know, the first time I ever met that man -- I wouldn't have known him from the man on the Moon -- were, "I hear you're everything that's wrong with Cisco."

I didn't say they left in disgust, I said they sold their shares because of disgust with the way they were treated.
Here's what I have to say about the California girl problem:

Try the UK and Ireland plus Western Europe. Women outside California have a very different attitude compared to those inside California. That's what I have to say about that.
I've tried a couple frameworks and for everything they make easier, they make something else harder. There's a learning curve, so your first stab with any framework is actually likely to be slower than using something simple.
IIRC this time they had about 500 applications and no fixed number of slots. In a previous round they had 30 interviewees and I think 13 were picked...
Nope, as I posted in another thread, trying to code all the time gets you a microsecond view, when you (most of the time) need a year-long view.

I have a hard enough time distracting myself from micro-optimization etc without trying to intentionally limit my goofing off.
A nice, sane Assembly language on a processor that does what you tell it, without speculative/out-of-order execution, etc.
I don't think Myspace has any merit

It doesnt matter if you don't think it has any merit, it's the 25+ million unique users per month that matter. Myspace is a great site in that it allows you to craft your profile into any look you want. This identity creation is what teenage users want. Combined with the network effects and you have the reasoning for myspaces success.

better-designed contenders

There are a few better designed contenders such as BeBo and Mixi who are doing very well outside of the US. I don't believe facebook counts as a competitor since it's lack of customisability and requirement for users to 'conform' does not appeal to the same users as myspace.
Where DO people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Bill Joy hang out online? Surely they need to chill out some time, too?

While online discussions like YC news are a big waste of time, I find that they tend to inspire me a lot, too.
Oh, you said earlier "I just switched my most intensive app to only use the database for backing up the data to disk and reloading from on startup" so I thought you meant you only read data from the database on start-up, hence all data fitting in core.

If you're reading data from it whenever you find the data isn't in core then aren't you using the database?

As for the "thread that writes changes back to disk at its leisure", how do you guard against machine failure after accepting data for writing but before it's been written?

Cheers, Ralph.
This http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15227 page says "12 points by Sam_Odio 11 hours ago | 3 comments" yet there are only two, before I post this one.

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15416 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15385

Does the root post count as a comment? Even if it does in the code, it would seem to confuse the reader.
The Meaning Economy
Information wants to be _found_
'... Thanks Jimbo for galvanizing the effort , looking forward to the
future that this group is going to help influence ...

Is this related to this? ~ http://searchengineland.com/061229-193718.php
Web Economics
Creidt: found in Jared Kim's weblog: http://blog.jaredkim.com/
Jimmy Wales On Search Wikia
MicroID - Small Decentralized Verifiable Identity
Desktop web applications and browser debate
Bringing the best of Desktop and Web together
I don't think it will improve Google's searches. Surely they are already tracking all that data already, so they won't gain any extra information from the service.

I assume that the number of people who don't have a Google cookie is neglectable. Besides, they can probably track you even without the cookie (Javascript tricks, flash cookies, good guessing etc).
I'm all for Scheme as first language. When combined with the SICP book for an introductory CS course, it allows you to explore pretty much any concievable paradigm in a single solid framework.

Sounds like a sales wrap, but it's really how I feel about it. And it's the MIT thing to do :-)
I blogged on the subject at http://yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com/microsoft_is_not_dead_it_just_has_a_flu.htm

Yakov Fain
Tips for Naming Web 2.0 Startups
Seconded, please explain. I don't have a view but was wondering about using Berkeley DB, including its replication, to have the web server running on each machine, with the BDB library linked in. Each machine would be a web server but also one of the replication group, with one master and many replicas. Writes go to the master, reads can be shared around the replicas.

BDB seems pretty flexible in policy decisions, e.g. the master can say the commit is complete when it hears back from N replicas depite not having written to disc itself yet.
I'd agree, environment is different. Risk of being on a management team is different. As is the culture of compensation and employee marketplace.

What has not changed is that company ownership is about investment risk.
You can even download full-length lectures for SICP:

http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

Anyway, I'd say the differences between Python and Ruby as a first language are too minor to matter. By the time differences in available libraries should matter, you should be able to decide for yourself which language to use.
You're missing the point. I'm saying that the reason for their success is not their own merit, but this random butterfly effect described in the linked study. It's a relevant discussion to have, since it indicates that there's a limit on how much you can control your own destiny in a social startup.
Hey Paul,

Just because Microsoft sucks right now in Internet stuff and is not that flashy like the cute AJAX startups (who are dying like flies), doesn't means too much, we need to see how the winds are blowing:

a. You can't build an Office with AJAX. AJAX is too hard to program, relative to the functionality you get out of it. Heh, I am sure I will get a lot of smiles for this. The keyword is "relative". Btw, I have been doing AJAX in 2001, and it sucked big time.

To build a WebOffice, you need something much more reliable, faster and powerful than the shitty JavaScript. A development environment with static compile time checking, better control of machine resources, faster. A FLASHy virtual machine for example.

Google Apps (Sheets and Docs) are nothing more than toys, and they are locked in pit. They cannot grow larger than they currently are in an incremental manner.

It is a pity Google did not snatch Macromedia, for lack of vision. Now Microsoft is building their own lightweight virtual machine, for exactly this purpose: deliver large scale apps to the web.

b. .NET binding to the OS (the binding of Windows GUI to .NET 3.0). That's the single most aggresive move I have ever seen from a company. It goes like this: we are a monopolist of the OS market. Should you want to develop for our OS (which you must), you MUST use our developments tools and proprietary languages, which do not work on any other OSes. The monopoly is self-reinforcing, with one more leg added. The plan of the MS new boss is far-fetched (they mentioned 10 years), but it is sound.

The seeds are in place and the wind is blowing Microsoft's way, just give them time to grow.

So, I will start to respect Google's strategy the moment they push for the control of their underlying platform, making that little virtual machine.

Regards,
Rares
What is GTD (Getting Things Done), does it stand for a specific work technique? Which one? Does it work?
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=9965
AppScout:More Google Search Alternatives
I think the comment count counts spam comments, but you don't see said spam comments.
I wanna know what the TechCrunch comment was. ;-)
I just started using GTD-like techniques. The basics of it are this: (1) write everything down as you think of it, so you don't forget anything. (2) very often, go through the list of random items; do the small (two minute) tasks immediately, and organize the rest of them into into (groups of) "next actions." (3) spend all the rest of your time eliminating items from the "next actions" list.

I think it is effective. There were many times when I let a lot of email pile up in my inbox. Now, I very deliberately go through my email and respond to everything ASAP; everything that I can't do immediately gets filed away in a TODO list so I don't forget it. My inbox is thus ALWAYS empty. I don't know why but that makes me happy. It also makes other people happy because they are getting their responses faster. And, I get more done because having a list of "the next thing I need to do" makes me want to do things to get them off the list.

The other thing I found to be helpful is to schedule all my distractions. Now, I have a reminder that tells me "hey, check your email" and even "hey, check your feed reader." This seems silly, but it is really helpful; I know that I will get the "check your feed reader" reminder soon, so I just keep working until it comes. Sometimes, I get annoyed and refuse (!) to check my email because I'm busy; in fact, I had started with scheduling them hourly but I am slowly reducing it down to three times per day. As a result, I check my email and weblogs WAY less frequently than I did before (even with an hourly reminder), because before I would check my email basically in between each item on my TODO list or even in the middle of something.
I also want to point out that it is easy to waste a lot of time looking for the absolute best productivity solution. The reason I picked GTD is because it seemed reasonable and other people claimed success with it; I didn't want to waste a ton of time evaluating methodologies. Similarly, there are a lot of productivity tools (especially software); I spent WAY too much time evaluating them, but only because each of them suck in their own special way. I think now I'm simply going to use Outlook 2003; I can't access it from the internet but I can sync with my phone which in many ways is even better.
"YBombinator"
There is a butterfly effect, yes there is a limit on how much you can control your own destiny in a startup. But it's not an insurmountable obstactle. It means you can't just copy myspace exactly, improve it in a few minor ways, and expect to win over all their users.

In terms of competition, you may not realize what your competitor is doing that is stealing all your customers. From what I remember, the main competitor to Myspace was LiveJournal, and the networking features of myspace were far superior. Customized pages with photo albums and links to all the people you know are a lot more intrinsically interesting than an article about taking your cat to the vet. The other competitor I read about was friendster, which had a head start in social networking but was beaten because musicians and their fans used myspace. [0]

I remember the first time I saw myspace, all I really noticed was the music. The random user profiles barely registered, although I remember thinking it would be cool to have a band page with lots of fans attached.

[0] http://emergic.org/collections/tech_talk_the_myspace_story.html
You're very right, the UIs look cluttered. It might be a good idea for me to continue working on this then :)
Interesting play on words.

YBombinator! is a concept that was conceived in real time by real people in an Internet chat room on April 17, 2007 @ 2:09AM Pacific Daylight Time. Think of YBombinator! as the un-incubator, helping cultivate un-companies.
What would make those tools suck less?
Does folksonomy qualify as a good name? I registered a name that violates almost every point in every guideline list I have read to date. To oops or not to oops.
That is exactly what the operating system's virtual memory system does. But, there comes a point where there is too much swapping.
mashable.com is censored here in Thailand. Do have an alternative source?
oh, you can probably find it. Should get you at least ten karma if you submit it here.
MacBook hacked in contest at security event
I suppose this really is the best alternative for someone so far from the valley or cambridge. Lots of nuggets in these archives. I hope everyone appreciates the power of what is happening here.
Beware pretty Web 2.0 apps
No idea. We'll find out when "soon" comes around. Nevertheless it was interesting. It reminds me of Trogdor; in fact, that was the reason why I checked that URL.
Mix faster, MixerCast(er)
Mowser mobilizes any Web page
The Webware 100 (Top Web 2.0 Sites Nomination)
Plenty of Google to go around
Visual programming Java applet for teaching binary search tree algorithms (including ones for balanced trees)
'MySpace will fail..'
This one? http://forums.techcrunch.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2929

Or this one? http://forums.techcrunch.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=6120៨

Or this one? http://forums.techcrunch.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=6796᪌

Edit: Oh never mind, TechCrunch's braindead Java forums don't seem to take well to direct linking, and yCombinator mangles the URLs when it attempts to hotlink.
Use hashtable for everything. So Person who has a name address age and occupation is represented as a hashtable with those fields. When you want to add a new field like emailaddress it's just another key in the hashtable.

Ideally you want to code the person accessors so that they still specific externally

person-name
person-age

the rest of the program uses these so it becomes easy to move person to a different structure if that's what you want .

You want to write some function to read a hash-table and write on to disc. In lisp this is trivial, but most languages have some sort of serializer. Then a function to load all the hash tables up when you start up.
The Perils of Being Suddenly Rich
You're getting the point - that we trust Mathematics even though it involves faith, because there is plenty of correlation to the 'real' world.

Similarly, Jesus is a real person, not an emotional crutch. An absolute truth, not a relative choice. Like 2+2=4 and not 2+2=5.

How do I prove it? Simple. Ask Jesus himself to show that he is real, to you. However when you ask, you cannot have an attitude - otherwise he will ignore you.

"you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart" [God]
(http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah%2029%20:%2013;&version=31)

He himself, will checkmate you.
Java Web Start does this.
That is why I used it for juwo.

http://juwo.com
I'm PG's age and definitely thinking about finding a way to do a startup. No, seriously. Maybe a consulting company that becomes a startup. Who knows?

But I envy the hell out of you guys who are in your 20s now. I had bad luck: when I was in my 20s, it was the late 80s/early 90s, and the economy was a wreck. No one was hiring, and doing startups was not all that easy. There was no internet to speak of, and so not only was it harder to start something (where??), but there was no place to talk about starting something and exchange information.

You guys really have some good opportunities, I think. If I were you, I'd just spend my 20s and early 30s (and maybe beyond) attempting to make a successful startup. Fail? Try again and learn from any mistakes. Adapt to the market as it changes and never stop learning! (Part of the reason guys my age don't do startups or invent new things is because they get complacent -- they stop learning. I have refused to do that, even though I am in an 'executive' position where I work.)
What do you notice in Nerds 2.0.1 -- a Great Three Part PBS Web Documentary?
But what is GTD? Do you have an URL that explains it?
I hate those shirts, pants, old monitors, bad haircuts, and huge glasses, but this is pretty cool.

8 mins in: Excite in 1994.

11 minutes: "Jeff Bezos figured out books were the ideal internet product because you don't need to touch in order to buy." It's funny that the warehouse looks like a library, but were already valued at B$1 before profit or technology.

Steve Ballmer - "I probably get at least 100 pieces of e-mail a day. E-mail is #1!" So, let's buy hotmail and not do anything with it for the next 10 years except change the user interface to blue!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTD
All part of the service, Sir.
Looks like you could be right. That's a bug then, I guess. If it's any use to me knowing how many comments there are, it should be how many non-spam ones, ones that I can see.
Yeah, it'll be replaced by FaceBook...

And then FaceBook will be replaced by something that probably hasn't been invented yet. I wonder when folks will learn that "lock in" in the social networking sphere is vastly overstated...
AOL founder Launches Health Care Portal & Social Network-Revolution Health
History behind the Pirates: Jobs announcing MSFT collaboration
Vote up if you think there should be a video section
This was probably one of the more motivating speeches I've heard in a while. It's especially significant once you've watched Pirates of Silicon Valley.

I can only hope that - in the next decade - some of us will be giving speeches this memorable and inspiring.
jwz: flat-files vs databases ("To a database person, every nail looks like a thumb")
I think after the 3 hour Nerds documentary I posted, everybody's been watching it and nothing has been voted up since! I'm still watching that but I'll watch your link right after.
Who are some quality law firms who have deferred payment plans?
I applied and didn't get an interview. Karma has very little impact on selection AFAIK. I believe I was let down by my idea: "It's a social network that..", but I've learnt my lesson and am proceeding in a slightly unexpected direction.

I know that danielha is having a YC interview, havent heard if he's in yet. Also a few others in the top 30 are waiting until wfp.
I find the syntax of Python very logical and intuitive (except for decorators, those seem magical). So that's why I prefer Python. And like others have said it's more mature and practical.

Perhaps start with Python but plan to take on another language in 2-5 years, when Ruby is more mature, or web hosting companies start supporting Scheme, or Haskell, etc.
During the Q&A, an audience member asked which of the companies would Y Combinator jump on board to fund if YC existed at the time. Jessica said it'd most likely be Hotmail.
The OS isn't very smart about it because it quantizes everything along page boundaries and has no semantic understanding of the data. That works fine in the typical desktop-system case where you have 100 processes using a few megabytes each and at any given time only one or two are active. When you're running one server process that uses all the system's memory, you can be a lot more efficient by handling it yourself.
Please use the request thread for future requests. There has only been a couple video submissions in the last few days; why create a page for those?
Ruby is, because Python sucks. Just kidding. But in all seriousness, Ruby is the shizzle.
I thought this was good, especially if you watch The Pirates of Silicon Valley first: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15248
I'm sorry, but I just can't help but not feel bad for these people. If you set yourself up for a fall like that, you get what's coming to you.

I think my "perils" would be a bit more reasonable, like paying off my school loans, helping my parents out, and basic things like that. If I ever irrationally waste money as he did (and borrowed money, no less), I hope that the same outcome befalls me.

Another point is that he wasn't "suddenly rich" anyways. He was buying things with money borrowed against the company. I would think that a wise man would at least wait until the money is definitely there before buying multiple homes and throwing away money in various ways.
Good post - and very true.

Almost every popular site is no more than 2-3 syllables, memorable, easy to pronounce, and a .com. Google, MSN, Yahoo, Digg, Reddit, GMail, the list goes on...

Too bad the squatters have got almost every other URL out there that satisfies these criteria :)
My favorite quote:

CanSecWest organizers relaxed the rules Friday after nobody at the event had breached either of the Macs on the previous day.
I could not believe my ears!

Jessica said that on her first visit to Google she was so enamoured by the free food that she stole 4-5 granola bars in her purse.

When she visited, I am sure she was already a very wealthy woman. Why did she steal them?

It would be nice if she herself can tell us.

(I shall watch the rest later - but anything that is not juwo-ed, I dont feel like watching thru).

Update: To all you people who are voting this comment down, -4 points already, is it wrong that I bring it up?

=------------

Update 2:
from http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15586

----------------

Actually it sounded like a confession and she said 'stealing'. If they are there for her to take, why hide them in her purse?
I am not faulting her at all for 'taking' the granola bars. I am certain, I might have done the same as her - but I am unrich and I would have taken them openly, in full view and so I might be justified - I think.

My comment was solely a wonderment, an observation, that a wealthy millionaire needed to do that.

I must be the worst communicator - judging from my product (juwo).

Seriously, can you look beyond what was an unpopular comment? I was trying to understand why an intellectual and financial millionaire from the cream of society did that.

Do millionaires behave differently, or do they stay the same? Or worse?