skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is a great idea from a publicity standpoint. Journalists will eat it up.

I will definitely throw this in for one of my upcoming sites.. Are you thinking of building an entire site around it?

edit: see how all of the negative publicity really positively helped hotenough.org recently.
JobThread Launches EasyPost, Targets Niche Job Boards
Make people always be required to be in the top 50% of members:) Sounds like an engaging competition to me.
For some reason I burst out laughing when I read the headline...

I predict that this site will do decently one way or another, though.
I guess seaside's continuation passing style helps to reduce complexity in managing states, which is a major requirement in desktop-like apps.
I think if you're alone and selling a non-mission-critical product directly to consumers, using "I" makes you sound more genuine and not out to take advantage of them. If you add a partner you could just do a regex replace.
Last.fm rolls out a $3/month subscription service
Actual Karma is defined as "The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny.". In hinduism there is this concept which says that whatever a person does is recorded and sum total will reflect in your next life.
I agree that HTML+javascript has serious limitations. But eventually GUI complexity can be managed through good APIs (XUL, flex), and high-bandwidth apps can be delivered through plugins that use lower-level protocols (flash). The current state of these technologies still seem less-than-optimal, but I can see a lot of effort being put into making things more transparent and efficient.
I know - what benefits do you get from Scheme over CL?
server is up!
Unype Is Multiuser Google Earth With Skype
"And I'm like, well, how about a reasonable amount of money to work a reasonable amount of the time? And they're like, no. And then I was like, well, how about a tiny amount of money to work hardly ever? And they're like, no."

Alas, salary is rarely a linear function of the hours you work.
Rails + Mysql

My webapps are requiring a lot of client side logic to be really interactive, so I've found that the biggest producivity factor is what I'm doing with Javascript. The Rails code I've been writing is mostly trivial; as long as it lets me talk to the database easily, I feel like any language could be used on the backend. However, I do love scripting in Ruby, and Rails makes it easy to use its DB abstractions in external scripts.

The best gains on the client-side come from using a good library. I've gone from Prototype/scriptaculous to YUI-ext to Mootools. I love Mootools. I've never been able to bring myself to try Dojo; it seems like it's trying to put the Java back into Javascript. What do you think?
No, make only make the stuff you're DYING to see yourself and know is something people want.

NOT because you want to be popular.

NOT because you want to make money (or worse, "easy money").

NOT because it will show off how smart or creative you are.

NOT because it uses cool technology.

This is not about extrinsic success.
Application : C#/F#
Web : asp.net 2.0 with C#/F#
You're asking "why not add complexity?" Not a good place to start.

If a project needs a database you'll know it pretty quickly...and it's easy to convert to using a database at that point. The only time I've ever regretted a decision about databases was when I designed a log processor that didn't immediately have relational needs...over a couple of weeks of implementing the requirements I ended up writing a relational layer in Perl against a Berkeley DB backend. That was stupid, and I should have thought a little harder about the requirements. But it was my first big solo project, so I blame inexperience for not recognizing a relational problem from the start. Luckily, SQLite had just been released, and converting my app to use it (and losing a hundred lines of code) was a one day operation. It made the app approximately 100 times faster for my data set.

But, well over half of my applications since then have not required a database and have been well-served by flat files.
Thanks for sharing great insight!
The goal is something you want and you know other people want. The process is to constantly iterate, know your story, and be flexible for change.

The rest of these (artistic merit, technical innovation, making boatloads of money) are side effects of successful vision and impeccable execution.
I wasn't really referring to Joost's viability as a P2P system -- it already is.

I was more along the lines of addressing the viability of building a compelling user-content community -- it's a lot harder than it may sound, especially when you think about how would Joost's primary features co-exist with multitudes of relatively "shallow" content.
I love the 'you can choose a gender preference of a co-rider' feature. Never hurts to put a dating twist into an idea.
One of two questions:

1. Why would they quit?

2. Why is this funny?

XP is stable. It loads executables, runs them, moves files around etc, without much fuss. Google's code runs mostly on interpreters, so...wtf? The only people who should care are the accountants who would have to pay Microsoft. I mean: Is the punchline, "Ha, ha, google's engineers really are as immature as the bean bag chairs suggest"?

(I withdraw my question if the answer is, "Because they wouldn't want to spend months on useless administrative tasks like re-installing OSes.")
I think that investors tend to forget how big of a drain they really can be to startups.
Of course, karma is a mainstream word now even in the English language. Yet "karma"'s understanding as a reputation system is limited to the slashdot audience.
shop search engine, A+ for vertical search
No particular framework. Though a framework is starting to abstract away as the site gets bigger.
Perl - Catalyst and PostgreSQL
One word comment would be "Rubbish". I have seen articles like these for past 10 years. Please note that its the consumer who drives the market. Unless there is someone who makes another "Windows XP" alike or better software and have the power/synergy to capture atleast 30-40% market. This aint going to work.
Just my 0.02 cents, thanks.
'... but with Amazon S3 available now I'm not sure I'm as excited ...'

it's an older article but anything google does changes B) the economics and B) gives greater choice.

'... wonder if they'd have a different offering ...'

Been thinking about this. I've been getting reports back about data + storage + access/retrieval [0]. My bet is something. There is an explosion of data occurring. The question is

- what types of data storage of the web going to be?

- what is the sql or retrieval method of the web?

- what are the tools to interact?

- what factors influence storage?

Also with storage it relies on bandwidth. What is the law on bandwidth? It's not like Moore`s law and relies on external forces beyond mere commodity markets. Well luck has it that there's Nielsen`s law [1] describing the increase of bandwidth per year, around 50%. So Moore`s law is number of transistors doubling every 18 months with an increase of about 60% per year. So anything google do with BigData will depend to some degree on peoples access to bandwidth.

What is google and others doing with bandwidth?

Reference

[0] Joe Gregorio, bitworking.org, 'ETech 07 Summary Part 2 MegaData'

http://bitworking.org/news/158/ETech-07-Summary-Part-2-MegaData

[1] Jakob Nielsen, useit.com, 'Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth, 5th April 1998'

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980405.html
Top 10 Lessons from the Dot Com Meltdown
I can't understand why MS is so hated vis-a-vis Apple. I've had a software made for Win 3.1 run on Win-XP, but a device driver had to be updated so that my wife's MAC-book could identify the printer. Why is there any reason to think that a monopoly under Apple would be better than one under MS (in the 90s)?

The reason why Google rocks is that its not a monopoly. It makes chunkloads of money and then some more. But it does not have a 96% market share of search or maps or video or any other service. And its the same reason why Yahoo or Amazon or Ebay rock. They are leaders and profitable and everything that 90s-MS was, but they aren't monopolies.

My comment is from the point of view of a consumer, not a competitor... so this isn't really a reply to the original post.
Because it's much easier to just dump your data to disk as you already have it, rather than translate it to SQL idea of what data is: SQL types, one-to-many relationships, etc.

This is not just a Scheme thing. If you use Java you have serialization. Python calls it 'pickle'. I'm sure whatever else you are using probably has something equally simple.
But lets say that I want to have more information, more inventions, even, in the final patent. Am I limited at all by the corresponding provisional patent or is it irrelevant?
As one of the collaborative projects on my social network, we asked that people code a spelling check script in PHP. One member, who had zero previous knowledge of PHP took up the challenge. After investing a few hours into it, he came up with the following:

http://shuzak.com/Teamwork.php

You're welcome to download the source code. One major issue with the code is that it loses efficiency when the dictionary size is increased from 1,000 to 20,000 words.
Target lawsuit tests limits of US web accessibility law
Karma simply means "duty". Every other meaning is a derivative of this fundamental definition of Karma.

From that perspective, using the word Karma with a number is utterly meningless :-)
How Do You Scale a Tag Cloud?
What catches your attention in a job listing?
Is it the opportunity to be a cofounder/early employee? Potential fame & fortune? A chance to change the world? Getting paid to build something cool? A specific vertical that youre interested in? The chance to work with great people?

What is it about a potential job opportunity that gets your attention? What would you have to see in a job listing to entice you to respond?
Is Mobile Web 2.0 more Hype?
iPod Empire Hits Milestone, 100 million iPods Sold
Here's a great example of something that used to take a lot more effort to build. I had a bunch of friends who started a company to do annotation of websites just like this in 2000. They probably had 30 employees, and quite a bit of funding, and eventually got sold to MSFT for enough for the investors to get some of their cash back, and jobs for the founders (hiring is obsolete, right?)

And these folks just replicated the core functionality (probably 50% of it) in a day.
He will be in California, I am in Kansas.
Wink: a free tool that you can use to create your demo in flash (Linux + Windows)
good reading right up to the last point ...

'... we need better predictive tools to plot the speed at which new technologies will spread. Spreadsheet gymnastics by 20-something b-school graduates should not dictate our investment decisions. We can produce better predictions. We have the data - from decades of technology innovation. We have the ability to analyze the data - after all, Everett Rogers wrote "Diffusion of Innovations" 40 years ago ...' [0]

Baloney.

When will these analysts get it into their heads you cannot predict with certainty by looking into the past figures. If this was the case there would be a lot more people making a killing on the markets, insurance companies would be rolling in dollars because they could reliably predict disasters et., al.

As for the solution or alternative I just don't know. Maybe closely observing select influences in a Gladwellian sort of way [1]. Maybe something the way O`Reilly keeps an eye on the Alpha Geeks to guide what trends are worth investigating. [2]

Reference

[0] business plan archive, 'Top Ten Lessons from the Dot Com Meltdown, 10) Prediction tools must improve', Ibid.

[1] Malcom Gladwell describes one such way you can make rapid decisions by gathering less information on a subject and focusing on a few key indicators. ~ http://www.gladwell.com/blink

[2] Tim O`Reilly may well have read Gladwells book because seems to (publicly anyway) pay close attention to "the alpha geeks" in the hope of understanding gaps, opportunities and future directions in the tech market. ~ http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail197.html
You have offered wise advice - thanks!

Though, I am surprised because in America, many people at some point, have worked at two or even threee jobs during the week to make income.

So theoretically, if he were to get a consulting job with Microsoft during the weekends, will Google own a piece of Microsoft? That would be interesting to watch :)
Stop talking about young vs old! It's irrelevant as Microsoft.
What do you think of this one?
Awesome, thanks for posting this. :)
Many a time, i get long mails and i just cannot help but to skip things. So wont it be good to embed a voice based email reader which will do a secretary's job by reading it to you when u carry out other talks? Whats the hard part in implementing this? Has anyone implemented this one?
Freedom and independence minimum intervention, flexible timings, stock options, % share in profits, clean non-political environment and above all suggestion box type model where one is ready to listen even to the bottom most ranked employee. I know i am askingfor too much ;-)
if the company were founded today on an empty lot, we would build the buildings brick by brick.
BTW are there any restrictions on the use of flash for commercial purposes such as demos? Do I need to pay anything?

The FAQ is confusing in that regard:

Can I use the File Format Specification to create a Flash Video encoder or a Flash Video streaming service?

No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF).

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileformat/faq/#item-1-9
http://valleywag.com/tech/startups/why-google-wont-buy-you-250885.php

Valleywag's opinion on the same quote....
From my limited perspective, it looks like one of the major drawbacks (evidenced in this discussion) is the lack of critical mass for one specific Lisp stack. Having so many competing setups makes for:

-little documentation

-little support

-limited libraries

-super tiny communities

Compare that to LAMP(P = PHP, Perl, or Python) and Rails. Their communities, docs, support, libs, etc are HUGE compared to the tiny fractured Lisp ecosystem.

Do LAMP and Rails have their own problems? Of course. But the point is that they have been proven over and over and over. Lisp is certainly sexy and will give you that toned body and hairy chest you always wanted, but beyond Viaweb and Reddit (cough, cough) can you readily (and without searching) think of other top sites that have delivered a major hit with it? Second, can you think of any hit Lisp sites that didn't involve Paul Graham? I rest my case.

I'd love to see this change, but unfortunately that's the current reality.

------

Update: After doing some searching, I also found ITA's backend Orbitz software written in Lisp. That certainly was a hit and is also used by many other systems. The author is Carl de Marcken and this hit is also mentioned in pg's "Great Hackers" essay.

So, Two Lisp Hit-makers:

Paul Graham, Phd in CS from Harvard

Carl de Marcken, Phd in CS from MIT

So, if you're a Phd in CS from one of the top programs in the world - I'd say Go For It! ;)
Google Caught Stealing
IT Opens Up and Lives On The Web
Python on Planes
ah this reminded me of an incident when a prof joked .....
A wrong answer is always unique :D
If it shows up in many papers then it either means you all copied or my answer manual is wrong
Watching the "alpha geeks"
Another Question?
Suppose you spend your time and energy focussing on building a startup and suppose you get unlucky and your startup ends up in dust. Will the investor/industry forgive you? What is the life after the bust? Can you get a job? Do people look upon them as untouchables or unlucky mascot?

Is this fear keeping people out from venturing in?
you can also listen ~ http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail197.html
Part 4: http://www.startupping.com/forums/showthread.php?t=310
We are currently looking at both Ruby and Python... What made you change, what makes you feel more flexible? We have been evaluating some of the Python frameworks and are currently trying to weight the positive and negatives of all the options... Any huge issues or just a bunch of different little things?
Interaction Design Patterns: really cool flickr collection
This is weird. The subscription service has been around on last.fm for 3 years or so. Looks like wired screwed up their facts.
RoR fits perfectly for my project
The 24/7 World of Justin.tv
Great article! I'm starting this summer and if we don't get the Ycombinator gig we've got a tough decision to make about where to start. I'm currently of the opinion that we should live in my parents basement for the 3 months and not come out until we've got a beta to launch. This way I can also take the last class I need to complete my masters and no money will be spent. My partner is more of the opinion that we should move directly to SV. Anyone with any experience or advice on this as we debate it out? Also, I'll have to search this outsidethevalley.com more thoroughly but what does one do to get these one on one meetings with VCs?
Go read Pauls essays. He covers aspects like this from his own experiences and those of groups he's funded.

Generally the theme is "Its better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all". Many employers (at good companies at least) will see someone who attempted to start a company as a person with good leadership skills and a strong work ethic. If anything this could help you get a job. Thats of course assuming you didnt do something stupid like drop out of school first.

Also, you can learn much through a failure. Look at the Justin.tv guys. They knew what it took to be successful the second time around by learning from their mistakes with kiko. Now they are totally rocking it.
I know that pal, i was trying to highlight the fact that "the fear of failure itself is the greatest fear". I was just curious to know what kind of reactions i may get.
Can some random person just sign up and go or do you need to be connected to the event somehow?
I'm in Canada, and they blocked everyone outside of the U.S.
#7 http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

I don't think there'd be a lot of visible changes. For a while I'd just relax, eat right, and exercise until I got interested enough in something to work hard on it.
Drug tests are my favorite example of corporations creating practical law. At this point in America, personal consumption of illicit drugs is effectively legal because of the unenforceability of drug laws thanks to our right to privacy. If you work for a major corporation drugs become illegal because insurance companies mandate pre-employment drug testing. The actuaries can easily show this lowers how often they have to pay for rehab.

For the article itself, the author doesn't make much of a point about the inaccuracy of drug tests because he made up the 99% percent accuracy figure. Drug tests are more accurate than that because all positive results are retested with a more expensive, more accurate test.
Use my http proxy. It doesn't work too well with most rich media, though.

http://www.granmos.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi or https://www.granmos.com/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi
Not so. On a couple programming assignments I've graded, some particular wrong output has been more common than the correct one.
Mac's I know have the "say" command that will read you whatever you type. I once wrote an quick script that would apply the function to a file and read it for you before I read that you can use the -f option to do that automatically. Also in the first pull down menu of mac applications you can select "services-speach-start speaking text" that will just read whatever's in your application. You could easily set the start speaking text option up to a shortcut key combination to make it easier.

I'm not much of a windows user anymore so I don't know of any tools on widows that might have this functionality. There could be a market for an email app. or browser plug in that would do this for you in windows.

Two of the limitation of a computer reading to you is one, speech is a lot slower than reading, and two the voices can be quite monotonous making it difficult to focus on while multitasking.

I've heard of some really interesting software for the blind that reads the contents of whatever they're "observing" at an accelerated pace. Apparently your ears can adjust to an extremely accelerated rate of speech making the process of hearing the text on your computer closer or even faster than the speed of actually observing it. Imagine writing software without a monitor! If you could get people to learn this skill we might be able to read our RSS feeds (or emails) much faster!

Something somewhat related to this is voice recognition. There is a lot of good software out there that can translate what you're saying into words, it should be hooked up to the operating system so I don't have to use a mouse and keyboard so much! When I visited MSFT on a job interview I talked about this with a guy who worked on related things. He felt that the technology was still a long way away. Prove him wrong!
Like this:

#tagcloud { height: 0%; width: 0%; }

That's about the proper scale.
To be honest the different isn't that huge. The major reason I chose python is because there are many python web libraries that conform to WSGI standard, which means I can easily swap out components (routing, template, widgets, database mapping, etc.) that suites me the best. As a result there is a broader variety of each type to choose from in python.

Rails, as stated by its creators, is opinionated software, so you're stuck with their preferred way of doing things, which fortunately is not too bad as of now. So if you're a control-freak like me who also wants to squeeze more juice out of your CPU cycles, then go for python. If you want to put your trust in a well-integrated framework of components cherry-picked by smart folks, then go for rails or django (also python, but a little less flexible).

Here's a fairly up-to-date overview of python web dev options:
http://jesusphreak.infogami.com/blog/vrp1
hmm good point. I was just wondering that its a pain to read long mails and that it would come handy. Just select some voice which is pleasant to hear and then put it as default. I dont know how to get this on but it was just a thought
good one. Yeah a dating one will be a good add on service. More like a blind-moving date
Anyone can go. My talk's probably going to be lousy, though, because I've spent the last several days doing nothing but reading applications.
Thanks :), but the embedded flash seems to show up blank. Anyone outside the U.S. getting a different result?
Paste it into Textedit.app?
Actually, it's true that it wasn't a coincidence. I've been doing nothing but reading applications all day, and I missed real work. I wanted to write something, but I couldn't take the time to write a proper essay, which takes weeks. So I just wrote down something I'd been thinking about lately.

(If you were suggesting I wrote it to attract attention to YC, the time to have done that would have been before the application deadline. This is the least useful time to attract attention.)
I'm a newbie and this is really helpful. I went through Uncommon Web's doc and it was too big of a jump for me. PCL seems pretty thorough and concise for my level.

Just curious, after this, in what order should I learn things? It seems that most CL libraries have very sparse docs. Does that mean I should develop a habit of reading the source code of everything I learn?
Why would they block people outside the US?
i was talking of web browser based plug-in that can do the trick which helps in getting this one