skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks, and the article is great. With many dynamic/VM languages though you usually don't need a build server, but only some sort of a testing server.

And I think uploading to a production web server should be made by a human operator rather than automatically, once the team makes sure the update works.
(It was a joking paraphrase of ESR's attitude towards Lisp. I don't know enough QM to evaluate it)
They thought of this. In that case people will use it from home. And if they're working for the kind of company that would block Overhear.Us, then there will probably be a lot they need to talk about.
From their "Team" page:

"Kelly is the co-founder and CEO of Imagekind, the fastest growing online venue to buy, sell or create original artwork."

Online art galleries, anyone?
Just realised this:

Startup News: 150 posts

New: Top 50 posts

Best: Top 50 posts

Couple of questions:

1. Is the Startup News section a combination of New and Best?

2. What about the ones that don't show up under these sections? Are they permanently lost?
Startup News is the current hot stories. Best is stories with record-high votes.

Older stories are still around. They're just not linked to anymore. You can search for them at nycs.bigheadlabs.com
OMG!1!!1!!! Get Apache, MySQL, andPerl FREE from SUN.COM internets web!!!!
Is http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com/ the only way to access those posts that are not linked anymore?

You must have an API that gets you access to these unlinked posts, correct?
Throw us a bone Paul
Flash/Flex or Silverlight?  Opinions?
Drobo - What drive array management should be like
I'm trying to get a better understanding of the pros and cons between flash/flex and silverlight.

Flash is the standard for online video, with ~98% PC's with some version of flash.[0] Our team can hack in flash/flex very easily.

Silverlight is being touted as the next platform by Arrington and Scoble. We might get a lot more press as being the first Silverlight app. Also, if silverlight provides a technological edge, then we can be one of the early adopters and beat everyone that's still using flash/flex.

The cons of Silverlight is that I'm not sure how much I trust Microsoft to screw me later. While the platform is free, the hosting and bandwidth will switch to pay-for-use after the beta is over. [1]

Opinions?

[0] http://www.forbes.com/2006/06/07/video-internet-youtube_cx_df_0607video.html

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/faq.aspx
There's no practical difference between checking out directly onto the CVS server vs. checking out locally and then uploading. You get the same files either way, it's just that they're sent via CVS one way and FTP the other. I suppose that you may not want your source code travelling in the clear over the web, but you should be able to use SFTP or tunnel CVS over SSH. I know you can do it with SVN - I connect to our SVN server via HTTPS.

If you do make your web root a CVS directory, be sure to block access to CVS metadata. I basically whitelist a few known extensions (.php, .html, .css, .js, .png, .jpeg, .gif, and .swf) and block access to anything else. You don't want to give random websurfers access to your CVSROOT.
Rules for Responsible Blogging
This is really cool. Adding storage or fixing arrays after drives fail can be such a pain, but Drobo looks like it really solves both these issues.
QM is about finding concise, mathematically perfect but weird solutions to some problems in physics. So is Lisp :)
Why would I want to be better at Arc than Lispniks? I'm a Haskeller. We're better than them anyways. ;-)

Seriously, this is one case where I think PG is wrong. Typing isn't the main productivity burden on programmers, thinking is. Any time you make someone decipher an identifier, you're slowing them down. Unpronounceable functions are particularly bad: I dunno about others, but I always think "F-N" when I see "fn", while I think "def" when I see "def".

I think Python and Scheme have it basically right, Haskell is okay but has an unfortunate tendency towards obscure vocabulary and cryptic conventions (nub? foldl? mapM_?), and Common Lisp and Java are way too verbose.
WSJ Says Microsoft/Yahoo Deal Not Happening
Sure, I forgot when was the last time I used an unencrypted protocol with production servers. CVS works through SSH, Dreamweaver now supports SFTP too.

One last question: does Subversion require a daemon on server-side or it can also work on the shell level like CVS?
It should be the other way around, since users rarely create the content of their submissions.
UI-wise, svn is a shell command like CVS. Tortoise also has a Windows shell extension for it (like CVS), and I think it's supported out of the box in Eclipse and some other IDEs.

As for what's going on on the server - SVN has a bunch of possible access protocols. There's a native svnserve protocol that IIRC runs a daemon server and accepts connections over the net. There's a local filesystem module. There's also a WebDAV module that lets you access it through Apache. That's what I use: I have a subdomain setup that virtual-hosts through Apache, with Subversion piped through SSL and all other content blocked.
Would make me happy, I comment more than I submit. ;-)

OTOH, actual submissions are often more detailed and well-thought-out than simple comments. So maybe this is the right way after all.
Series A03 and above of the Dell 24 inch monitor, shipping since September, have no banding issues. The monitor is absolutely awesome. The best part is you can probably keep it around for 5 years or more, and it has all the TV inputs except HDMI that you may need (no tuner, but many devices have a tuner these days.) I got mine for about $540 after a 25% coupon as part of a new computer system. You can buy some 17 inch monitors for $200 but you will definitely get rid of them in two years. Why not buy something you can keep for a long time? When you're a huge billion-dollar company in a few years from now, and want to get a 30inch monitor (the only real alternative) instead, you can simply use this monitor as a TV screen on the wall behind the receptionist. :) Gotta plan ahead for that...

And, it even has a card reader and USB ports built-in to the side. It also supports VGA on one button, and DVI on another. You can easily swap what you're looking at by connecting to two different computers at the same time. Then, simply get a wireless keyboard and mouse, and plug the USB receiver into its stand for the main, DVI, computer, or unplug the receiver and plug it into the monitor, for the VGA connected computer, and click a button on the monitor to go to the VGA computer. No KVM switch needed. Just connect to the monitor's USB/card reader cord to the USB port of the VGA computer.
Is anyone else kind of dissapointed to hear that after what seems like a grueling application process (I didn't apply) this is the best YC can come up with?

Maybe there aren't that many areas on the web that are still ripe for innovation...
I think it's kinda clever.

It reminds me of my reaction when I saw Reddit. "Well, this is new, but I can't imagine anyone ever doing something useful with it." I was right about the first part, right about the second, but completely wrong about the implicit assumption that things have to be useful before they'll be used.
By "shell-level" I meant a cvs client, be it GUI or a shell command, can connect to a server that doesn't run any special daemons except sshd or telnet. Essentially, the cvs client logs in via telnet or ssh as a user and works on the file-system level. The less components you have to run something the better, always.

I looked at their web site but still don't get it - does SVN require something other than sshd/telnet on the remote server? But never mind, I'll figure it.
We're slightly profitable. Probably not as profitable as all the people copying us think. It's hard to predict how much we'll make long-term. We won't make much from the startups that get bought early. If a startup gets bought for $5m after taking an angel round that dilutes us down to 4%, that's only $183k (200 - 17.5) pretax. We won't be buying Gulfstreams on those deals, no matter how many of them there are.

For us to make a lot of money, we'd have to invest in companies that scored very big, and we have no idea yet how many will go through YC. The data is moderately encouraging so far. As well as Loopt there are two other startups funded by big VCs that haven't launched yet. But there's still not enough data to see trends.

Fortunately, unlike a VC firm, we don't need to make a lot of money. The main reason we're doing YC is that it's a cool hack. It makes it even cooler that we might make some money out of it, but that's not essential. We just need to make enough not to have to stop, and we'll probably manage that.
Agree with the first two parts, although I do think Reddit serves a useful purpose. I don't use it because news.YC and Digg provide me with more than enough to digest every day.

Back to the point, though: who do you see as the target demographic of overhear.us?

I suppose when I think about work, I think of my parents, and despite being technologically capable, 1) this site would get blacklisted where they work and 2) I can't see them sitting in front of a computer at home gossiping, although they do talk about work quite a bit
I figure it's made for the younger FaceBook generation who're just now entering the workplace and want a place to gripe about FaceBook being blocked at work.
People are lazy. And people at big companies, where web-blocking software is routinely deployed, are especially lazy. Standard Bayes.

Vault.com, despite not having nearly as nice a site as overhear.us, had reams of traffic and posts about individual employers, until it got blacklisted.

I can imagine this site having a good following with companies that are not strict about the web-filtering list [which I abhor, btw].

However, those companies are not likely to be large because large companies have burdensome regulations [SEC in financial industry, HIPAA in healthcare industry, SarbOx for all public companies] that generally require (or imply that) employee communication and web usage should be monitored.

And large companies are the interesting ones for overhear.us, because they have the most interesting networks and stories!
I guess it all comes down to "Doing what you Love", and thanks for the bone.
I can certainly see this being more appealing to them (us) as a generation, but I still think the fear of getting caught will outweigh the desire to post one's thoughts online in many cases, especially when it isn't all that hard (and is actually more useful for one's social life) to talk to someone at the office, be it at the water cooler, in the hallway, in your own office with the door closed, or at lunch or dinner.
And also provide the least chance of getting caught. Yeah, I know it's anonymous, but at a small company "anonymous" doesn't mean much. It's not hard to figure out who's dissatisfied, who's the gossip queen/king, or even figure things out just by the way someone writes.
BlogRovr Adds Twitter This to Twit About Sites You Are Surfing
This could turn into the non-nerd version of InklingMarkets.com. Or it could just be a place to bitch about your boss. I think it's great!
I don't think it's quite that simple. You're probably born with a base level of intelligence that you can improve to a certain level.

It's like with chess. As you play, you get better and better until you plateau, and that becomes your rank.
OverHear.us: Corporate Gossip 2.0
"Microsoft and Yahoo in recent months discussed a possible merger of the two companies or some kind of match-up that would pair their respective strengths, say people familiar with the situation. But the merger discussions are no longer active, these people say. The two companies may still explore other ways of cooperating."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117827827757492168.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

This is just some hedge fund manipulating the market by making up a fake story that press just eats up.
haha... I think you just know in your gut when you need one.
Be careful about being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Lots of time gets sunk into getting and keeping all of the features (that you'll end up wanting) running on Linux boxes.

I did Thinkpads for as long as they've been around and fought that fight over and over and over again. Then I finally switched my laptops (and only my laptops :-) to Apple Powerbooks. Fully outfitted it was basically the same price as the high-end Thinkpads.
Have you tried the new VMWare or Parallels on your Apple?
The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias:

In January 2006, Drew Westen and a team from Emory University announced at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Palm Springs, California the results of a study[2] showing the brain activity for confirmation bias. Their results suggest the unconscious and emotion-driven nature of this form of bias.

The study was carried out during the pre-electoral period of the 2004 presidential election on 30 men, half who described themselves as strong Republicans and half as strong Democrats. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, the subjects were asked to assess contradictory statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry. The scans showed that the part of the brain associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was not involved when assessing the statements. Conversely, the most active regions of the brain were those involved in processing emotions (orbitofrontal cortex), conflict resolution (anterior cingulate cortex) and making judgment about moral accountability (posterior cingulate cortex).[3]

Dr. Westen summarised the work:

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones....

Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts'."[4]

---end of wikipedia excerpt---

As nearly as I can tell, this kind of bias afflicts most/all of the folks who frequent YC News. To understand why I think this, review my previous submissions and the non-response each received. It seems that (aspiring) entrepreneurs who are pure tech (I'm a hybrid of comp sci & comedy writing) just don't want to believe that, going forward, their companies will probably have to market profitably to be competitive.
When did we decide your code was cooler relative to someone else's when you end up typing fewer characters per line for the same functionality? If anything, the added density per line makes reading code (yours or, worse, someone else's) more difficult.

Maybe I'm missing something.
How badly do most/all YCNews-ers suffer from confirmation bias?
i = 0

while True:

i += 1

if not urlfetch('http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=%d' % i):

break

# implementaton of urlfetch() left as an exercise to the reader
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias:

In January 2006, Drew Westen and a team from Emory University announced at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Palm Springs, California the results of a study[2] showing the brain activity for confirmation bias. Their results suggest the unconscious and emotion-driven nature of this form of bias.

The study was carried out during the pre-electoral period of the 2004 presidential election on 30 men, half who described themselves as strong Republicans and half as strong Democrats. During a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, the subjects were asked to assess contradictory statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry. The scans showed that the part of the brain associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was not involved when assessing the statements. Conversely, the most active regions of the brain were those involved in processing emotions (orbitofrontal cortex), conflict resolution (anterior cingulate cortex) and making judgment about moral accountability (posterior cingulate cortex).[3]

Dr. Westen summarised the work:

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones....

Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts'."[4]

---end of wikipedia excerpt---

As nearly as I can tell, this kind of bias afflicts most/all of the folks who frequent YC News. To understand why I think this, review my previous submissions and the non-response each received. It seems that (aspiring) entrepreneurs who are pure tech (I'm a hybrid of comp sci & comedy writing) just don't want to believe that, going forward, their companies will probably have to market profitably through branded entertainment to be competitive.
Now it is easier than ever for geeks to get LAID.
Probably pretty badly. Like everybody else.

That said, your comments don't languish because they contradict some deeply held notions of the news.YC community. They languish because they're irrelevant and read like spam. Most people here know they have to market profitably, they just don't think anything you've proposed is the best approach to that.
Ok. So I am a geek. I walk into a bar, full of college athletes and players. To my surprise, it seems that being geeky nowadays get your women. Maybe they think I am the Next Google Kid. Man this is sweet.
Succinctness is power: notation should contain as much information per character as possible, so we can be programmers instead of typists.

Would that be easier to read if I added (superfluous) words?
Vote me up just for the Fun of it.
What have I submitted that is irrelevant to understanding how to maximize profits from branded entertainment?

Be specific.
I dare you to leave a comment just so we can vote you down.

Vote me up/down if you don't care about karma.
Actually, I'm not sure you can call this "suffering." Having a healthy dose of confirmation bias can be the difference between trusting your instincts and giving in to naysayers(much of the world).

Opposite extreme of confirmation bias is going by research and the written laws. And we know very well the limits of research.

Obviously confirmation bias is no excuse to ignoring apparent problems and flaws. That is just denial--especially in later stages of a startup.
Also, you should lose the style of response you used above. Way too ad hominem, especially given that you spent exactly no time acquainting yourself w/ the content linked to by my submissions.
vote me down. if yo feel like it. either ways i just want to know how fast i can go up or down.
My takeaway from the Wikipedia excerpt is that being afflicted w/ confirmation bias equates to being in denial. Healthy denial seems oxymoronic, as denial precludes risk management...
As nearly as I can tell, this kind of bias afflicts most/all of the folks who frequent YC News. To understand why I think this, review my previous submissions and the non-response each received. It seems that (aspiring) entrepreneurs who are pure tech (I'm a hybrid of comp sci & comedy writing) just don't want to believe that, going forward, their companies will probably have to market profitably through branded entertainment to be competitive.

I agree with the idea that here in this Web Startup World Echo Chamber, we're all probably suffering from a big helping of confirmation bias... but your comment at the end about this being reflected by your submissions being ignored is a total non-sequitur. How does branded entertainment relate to news.yc? Lack of interest in the videos you recorded doesn't necessarily indicate that the audience here suffers from confirmation bias. Maybe the community just isn't interested in your submissions.
In that case, I'll say that denial has some role behind almost every big entrepreneur's success or business deal.
Use flash if you want to actually go into production with this app. Silverlight has no adoption yet.
I nticd ur nt tping lk ths. Sentences are much easier to understand if you use words, even if the abbreviated forms can be parsed out to the same meaning.

If your aim is to save yourself a couple characters per line, fine. But it does come at a cost.
How does branded entertainment relate to news.yc?

Well, as nearly as I can tell, many of the folks who frequent YC News are interested in understanding how to give rise to a successful startup, and two big pieces of that puzzle are marketing and generating profits...
I can see this... but the best way to judge whether such bias exists (and is also a bad thing) is by looking at the success or failure of our startups, right? The free market ain't perfect, but it's better than most other methods of deciding value. This point assumes that we take each other's advice here ;)

Also, I recall a BBC article a while back citing a study showing that ~half of all scientific studies turn out wrong because they failed to exclude variables. The study, below, needs to be supported by other studies in other circumstances (and maybe those exist -- I don't read psy journals).
This has to be the most elaborate gripe I've ever heard from someone whose stuff got ignored on a social news site. I don't remember any of your other submissions, but if they had as low a signal to noise ratio as this one, I can see why they might not have got many votes.

Basically this post = "Everyone here is so deluded that they ignore me!" and not even in your own words.
Hmmmm...

As best I can recall, relevant (meta-analyses of) studies of entrepreneurship concluded that successful entrepreneurs are typically very mindful of risk. Amar Bhide's book The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses may be a good source for a survey of the aforesaid scholarship.
I'm just positing a hypothesis. Why so gratuitously ad hominem? At least gather some data first...

(But thanks for the interesting data point :-)
I don't think people are paranoid enough to use this.
I've heard this a lot, particularly on the old reddit, and it never really fit with my experience. I was told that I was precocious from when I was about three. I was never particularly risk-averse academically; I sought out books and courses at the highest level I could, which was sometimes too high. I skipped into courses up to five years ahead of where I was officially, and probably didn't do quite as well as I could have, but I wanted to know it NOW, dammit! I have learned to be somewhat risk-averse because I have been trying to optimize admissions chances to various places, but other than consciously doing that, I've never noticed myself shying away from difficult things.
Mindful but not necessarily dictated. In some ways the idea of "risk" itself is a form of denial, no?
How do you actually vote down someone's comment or post? I don't see a downward-pointing triangle, so I thought a only a super-user could do it. Am I missing something?
Vote this up if you know of any YC-funded startup that TechCrunch has NOT mentioned at least once
It remains to be seen whether it's the best YC can come up with. The bar has been set pretty high (Reddit, though some, including Paul, consider Loopt the best one so far...I think I disagree with him on that, though Sam is a damned impressive fellow).
Wow. I guess this explains why they weren't interested in our http://dontrentfrom.com , since it's a variant on the same idea. It would be trivial to spin off various topical forums.
I believe you have to have a certain amount of karma. Not much, though, since I can see it with less than 20 karma.
Basic Design Principles for Software Developers
Maximizing The Value of Your Keystrokes