skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I tend to be most productive in the morning - usually around 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM. Then I typically have another productive period before dinner (it'd be 5:00 - 7:00 PM if I didn't have to commute from work), and then one before I get to bed (11:00 PM - 1:00 AM or so, 'cept if I don't have obligations like getting up the next morning it runs till like 3:00 AM, which pushes the next day further by 2 hours). So I guess it varies among people.

It occurs to me that with 6 hours of productive hacking, you could in theory start a startup and still have a day job, except for the interruptions. For example, all three of my most productive periods are bisected by an hour-long commute or the need to go to bed, making them effectively useless. Has anyone tried telecommuting + startup, or consulting + startup? It seems like if I could shift my working hours to 2:00 - 10:00 PM and get rid of commuting time, I'd be able to get all the work for my day job done in the 5:00-7:00 PM timeslot, and have 6 hours of useful time for my own projects.
Hiring Stories from Silicon Valley
Standout Jobs was well represented at last week's TechCrunch 9 party with the attendance of co-Founder, Fred Ngo.
Overall, I agree. Nut I disagree with the second half of the statement: "You don't need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can easily cross over from being a novice in any language in a matter of a few weeks."

The first half of the sentence is right on, but I'm not sure about the second half. Based on personal experience, it takes me a while to use a new programming language well.

Of course, I wouldn't really call myself an expert programmer just yet. This is partly because I majored in Math and didn't get quite as much exposure to different programming languages as I should have (I just did all my homework in C++). But it's also partly because I actually bought the line about how a good programmer can move from one language to another easily, and figured I'd be able to pick up new languages quickly.

An excellent C++, Scheme, Perl, and Javascript hacker will learn Ruby as quickly as it takes to memorize the syntax. A genuinely smart Java hacker (who is learning there's more to this whole language thing than he first realized) will learn how to write while loops in Ruby very quickly, but it'll take a while before he/she instantly realizes when to use blocks and yield.
Working more than 8/9 hours a day is all too common in this industry. Everyone is going above and beyond, so you might think you have to too. One Google HR rep has actually told me they expect you to do this.

I know people that work 60 hours a week at big companies. The article is true... Once you start consistently investing long hours of work, you'll be expected to continually do so.

So what's the balance between working hard enough to get recognized and having your own life too?
Wow, you can finish all your work for your day job in 2 hours? Impressive.
Got a Weekend? Start a Business
Trying to a start a Web-based business in two days, knowing when to turn an idea over to a pro, incorporating online tools into a business
Startups&#8217; users want to know what you are doing, but they don&#8217;t care about how you feel
Startup launches real estate index
Manhattan-based startup Radar Logic has licensed its real estate data to three Wall Street firms that will allow investors to bet on which way residential real estate markets are headed.
which app?
No, but several times I've gone to sleep thinking hard about a problem and then solved it in my sleep. That's why I keep my laptop by my bed.

I tend to get really weird dreams when this happens - not unpleasant, just a little odd. For example, in high school I had a calculus midterm the next day and dreamed that I was sitting on a brick wall at an orphanage solving a volume integral while little kiddies played underneath me and waited for me to have a great fall. I ended up solving the integral in my sleep, then found that there were 3 volume integrals on the test the next day. Ended up scoring about 10-15 points higher than if I had not dreamed about it.

I had similar experiences in college with physics problems and lately with computer programs, but I can't remember the actual dreams. Oftentimes I end up solving them in that time when you're not fully asleep but not fully awake either.
Hmm...when I click on the link, it says "and projects Facebook ad revenue as $6,049,602,150 billion!" in the middle of the text (end of second paragraph). Maybe we are looking in different places?
Most day jobs don't have much real work. ;-)

Actually, I should probably clarify - when doing active product development, it takes way more than 2 hrs/day of work. At that point, you can basically forget about doing any outside programming projects. But most jobs are very feast-or-famine: once you've written the program, you have little bug reports dribble in, or your boss asks you to reboot the server or something. If you architected the program well, it shouldn't take more than 2 hrs/day to keep up with those.
Oh I see what you are saying. No, I don't think they meant to say that number and then put another 9 zeros after it. I think they meant it to have it read as the number printed, i.e. what you would say aloud when reading if the word billion was not printed. Of course, one of us could actually register and read (or at least skim) the analyst document :)
Original?

gizmodo
[via] http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/how-lock-pick...
[via]
http://www.jenimattson.com/pages/identity/melvin.shtml
The Naked Truth Goes Straight to Video...
The six trillian revenue is possible if we have the Weimer-like inflation some are predicting.

"So, what's it really worth?" is a question best answered with another question, "...before or after the next flash in the pan replaces it?"
Brad has created so many incredible projects (MogileFS, Memcached, Perlbal, LiveJournal, OpenID) with many of them being OSS. He's a really bright guy with a good head on his shoulders. Whatever company he goes to will be a lucky one.
How do you get through boring projects?
At work, how does everyone normally get through boring projects or boring parts of projects?

I normally try to find at least something that's interesting about it. For example: recognizing consumer facing aspects and technically challenging
You just...do them. You acknowledge you have no choice and just do the boring parts.
I've got several friends that were on the LJ dev/abuse/support teams (all volunteers; none were paid employees). Brad is a good hacker, but a terrible manager. He makes all the mistakes that novice technical managers tend to make: not trusting underlings, micromanaging technical details, solving the most interesting technical problems himself, belittling workers, and getting defensive when he screws up.

Google or Facebook would do well to hire him in a technical capacity, but I can understand some of the "watch out Google employees; you don't want this guy as your manager" comments on the Valleywag article.
true true. However, the bit about telepathy led me to think that it might be tongue and cheek. I don't care enough to go and check, but if you do...

:P
Pahtee poopah.
Visual Metaphors: 7 rockstar examples on the web
Forget design 'inspiration' - just stick to the basics
Search engine for code in programming books
Facebook challenges Craigslist for the couch-surfing market
What the heck is a resmue
Happy birthday, SMS!
Plaxo Launches Social Network Pulse
It's a business card. I hope you can't be jailed for possessing a business card.

(Yes, it's convenient that it's possible to turn the business card into other tools.)
resumes are stupid. sorry for writing that earlier. they are some of the fastest growing apps on facebook. i have a decent background on this stuff. really need some people. monetization is easy.

i have already been offered 6 figures cash but want to grow more. likely will be funded...
Step One: Cut off Nose. Step Two: Spite Facebook.
Hackers: Social Network Sites Could Expose Users
why does everyone compare themselves to google? with everything company, something'll happen eventually and it'll turn into the present-day microsoft. the thing that i'm focusing on is to become a leader like google w/o replicating it step-for-step. google found it's wave and surfed it... now it's our turn to do the same in our own niche/product.
I've had similar experiences to nostrademons. I often crack hard problems in the groggy netherworld just as I'm going to sleep or just as I'm waking up (or during an afternoon nap). Showers and long walks are also good for this purpose.

I mainly dream about software these days, but I had similar experiences in college and grad school with physics. Freshman year I figured out the orbit in an inverse quartic potential during a nap (warning: you pass through the---bang!---center of force), and in grad school I unlocked the last remaining problem in my Ph.D. thesis during a one-hour random walk around campus.

Incidentally, all this contributes to my conclusion that I'm not well-suited to a normal job. Even if I could get an employer to accept intellectually that they should pay me to take naps and go for long walks, I don't think they could ever really come to terms with it emotionally. Whereas the cofounder of my last startup probably never even noticed I occasionally napped and that I spent half my time walking around town; if he did, he certainly didn't care.
take every project as a learning experience. if you have the ability to select what projects you accept, only take the ones who have an "emotional" connection to you and/or your business... aka, the ones that don't cause you to groan and hate your line of work. :)
Fairy dust.

I don't play with that many of them, but the only one I've seen with ads is Graffiti, which uses Google Ads on its canvas pages.
i wouldn't say it's impossible... but if you have too many "leaders" and not enough "doers" then ideas and expectations start to bottleneck. ideally, my preferred team would consist of 2 leaders (one w/ more experience in marketing/biz and one w/ more experience in the flow of programming and visual design layout), a hardcore programmer and a UI designer.
I know a few are making at least $1,500 a day on ads....
Facebook embarrassment for Giuliani
And they're swamped. Would give you an upper limit on the price though.
That's interesting. Can you provide a link to more info on that theory? Because I recently switched off my cable tv in hopes of being more productive, but my answer to your question would be "pretty easily". Actually, now that I think about, the time when I was most susceptible was when I spent a lot of time surfing productivity blogs; those are rife with those kind of posts.
Congratulations. Another missed opportunity for the major record labels. Glad they are trying to hang in there by partnering with companies that will only allow music downloads for Windows Media Player, and have a board full of suits.

http://corp.spiralfrog.com/board.aspx

not that i have a problem with any of the fine gentleman or woman on the spiral frog executive team.
Startups:  What's the worst that could happen?
I am curious to know what happens to the majority of startup founders -- the ones that fail. Financial ruin? Slinking back to the cube farm? Moving back in with mom and dad? Exhilarated by the experience and trying again?

What is the best way to manage the possibility of failure without planning to fail? Am I just being too risk averse?
Just curious, what did you use 12-8 PM for?
FaceBook is the Online Hub for Connected Professionals
Plaxo launches new social network - a lot like Pownce
It wouldn't hurt to explain which app it is, what you are doing, what kind of skills you are looking for, etc. If you have 1.5M users then you obviously aren't in stealth mode or anything.
candidates (from appsaholic):

29: What's your stripper name?	1,475,198
30: Slideshows	1,453,111
31: My Aquarium	1,346,019
32: HOT or NOT	1,323,825
33: Sticky Notes	1,247,024
34: (fluff)Friends	1,239,031
A few that I know of:

#1 took the IP of his failed startup to China and tried starting another business in exactly the same area, but with Chinese programmers instead of American. Last I heard it hadn't gone anywhere (for exactly the same reasons that the first failed), but money lasts 5 times as long in China.

#2 - a cofounder in the same startup - went to China and opened a school, along with consulting for numerous businesses there. His new venture is doing great.

(#1 and #2 are both independently wealthy from previous startups, however.)

#3 ended up being hired by the business he tried to compete against.

#4 did some consulting work and then took a visiting professorship at a university.

#5 slunk back to the cube farm, then was laid off in the next recession and became a househusband.

#6 slunk back to the cube farm.

Something you should remember: many businesses (particularly ones that don't take outside funding) neither succeed nor fail, but limp along with enough revenues to pay a small staff but not enough to grow quickly. You should be prepared for this possibility and know whether you would want to abandon the startup and go back to the cube farm, or stick it out in hopes of one day making a breakthrough. For startups that are not in hot markets, you'll find that they're significantly more work than a regular job with not much more pay (though you do have more freedom). I know at least 2 other entrepreneurs in this category.

As for the best way to manage the possibility of failure: keep your skills sharp, and make sure that you fail because of things you can't prevent rather than things you can. Most big companies will eagerly hire a top-notch hacker who failed because there was no market for what he was building. Not many will hire someone who had a top-notch market and yet sat on his ass all day instead of building something.
I am in stealth mode in regards to which ones I own. You can see one of the latest ones we created

apps.facebook.com/tattooyou

prefer php, need someone who cranks out code, i am doing big things. i think:P
Plaxo: One PIM App To Rule Them All?
Six Apart should have been what Facebook became. They screwed up.

Good for Brad, though.. he'll have lots of fun at Google!
Going live with an alpha release before incorporating -- and not losing my house.
In what situations is it reasonable to make a site live without
Incorporating my company? What if I'm taking money from users? What if I'm not taking money but am taking private data like email addresses?

I love the idea of pushing something out to users as soon as humanly possible, but I really don't like the idea of getting sued.
Chris Smoak, is that you?
I kind of took the route of #3. Granted we didn't really fail because technically we never started the company (but we did do a lot of market research and planning). My "expertise" from having gone through those stages was enough to get me hired at the company we were going to compete against.

I think that if you're a bright enough person with the motivation to start a company, you'll be fine in the long run. Sure, the months after failure will suck, but you'll bounce back if you're motivated.
Good question. I just posted something similar -- trying to avoid the worst case.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39939
Is your website about spreading libelous rumors about rich people / corporations? Are you putting up a webstore selling toys / food from China?

Seriously, IANAL, but lots of (unincorporated) websites collect email addresses (right down to everyone's personal blogs). Lots of businesses operate as sole proprietorships without problems... I may be stupid, but I don't think limited liability protection for a startup is (usually) very important. At least not in the early days.
I never want to manage employees. I think that model is broken and perpetuates wage slavery. Similarly, I think the concept of "leadership" is primitive -- why is it a given that someone else is going to make our decisions for us? Or, being a leader, why should I want to be "in charge of" other thinking, autonomous human beings?

So I'm not surprised when I hear yet another "bad manager" story. The organizational structure itself is the problem. Almost all innovation comes instead from individuals or small groups of co-equals; the startup model of equals cooperating is the source of practically all progress.

When founders try to turn that into a big company, they choose a model for stagnation -- trying to preserve things as they are. (This is akin to the folly of the Elves in LOTR.) That is, they start out with some actual innovation, but then they try to hold onto a worldview in which it remains at the top, even as the world is changing around them. In trying to sell it as long as possible, even when it is no longer new or cutting-edge, they will fight to stop change, including progress -- competition -- by controlling markets or channels rather than continuing to innovate.

I am going to keep my startup small, human-wise, and automate instead of employ.
Facebook strikes me as a force for evil. They want real names, real background info, real explanations of relationships, all of which they will data-mine ruthlessly to the extermination of your privacy. They even ask for your e-mail and IM passwords so they can mine all your contacts and information!

I don't trust them one little bit.
Upper Limit On # of news.YC posts? & Average Karma
For reasons unknown, I wanted to figure out what the karma leaders average karma/post was (i.e. who is submitting the highest quality posts?)

It appears that news.YC only lists up to 180 submissions, rendering my little experiment useless. However, I was able to determine that:

staunch's karma/post is 7.66
paul's is 19.41 (celebrity effect?)
brett's is 6.58
mine (who gives?) is 7.38
Sam_Odio's is less than 6.63 (assuming 180+ posts)
danw's is less than 6.51 ("-----")

news.YC should have another leader board for quality in addition to just absolute karma.
Disco Stu: "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue -- eyyyy!"
I thought about this too. One related point is active users. Some folks were active then left. Sam_Odio's most recent submission is 55 days old.

I think karma/day, over the last N days, would be a fine measure.

Also, I think comment-karma/day would be the best measure. It is easier to get points by reposting titles of other people's work as submissions than through thoughtful comments.
There is no such thing as failure, only results. Just watch out for the ice weasels.

We're living in a narrow window between the end of the old paradigm (in which individuals had very little power) and the future one (in which you can do anything you want, in a simulated universe). We'll probably get there in another 20-30 years, and everyone will "win" at once.
Or, as the update to the post suggests, allow people to pay a large amount up front.
The Big List of Bookish Social Networks
The reply you got there is the correct answer. People don't sue "nobody's" because they will get nothing.
I know of a group that spent 2 years on a startup, moved into their parents home, still kept going - and finally after 2 years gave up. They now work at Yahoo. :-)
He seemed to do alright when he was running it himself and most of his staff were really peers. It can be hard to work with people you would never have hired. He probably doesn't respect a lot of the people at SixApart. He might do better at Google where high competence is a prerequisite and there's less hierarchy.

Not to mention that most great leaders have had lots of people who hated them. So that's not necessarily a bad sign.
One easy way is to have a better (read: shorter, friendlier) interviewing process. From what I read, Google is a 12-step program with a bunch of logic puzzles.
Precisely. The "proven" ones are already rich; thus you are always going into the trenches with "unproven" people. I don't know why anyone is worried about this -- it doesn't take months to discover that someone isn't dedicated. Setting up ownership agreements with someone you haven't worked with yet is the only mistake here.
It's interesting that you think that people who are really driven can end up being unsatisfied because of that nagging feeling they have telling them there's more to be done.

I would think that having a lot of money would give you the freedom to choose your work, and the ability to wake up every day and work on something you feel passionate about would make you happier. I guess you could say that you don't need a lot of money to do that. But it would make it easier.
Ouch. That's like a distillation of all that's wrong with the latest batch of BMWs.

The problem is not that they strayed from conventions. The problem with that car is that it's fugly.
Most of us probably have those moments where we think of how great it would be to live one of your 'extreme' examples, but we wouldn't really want to live like that. Who wants to spend their lives just sitting around? In fact, most people I know spend their free time creating things in one form or another, and would do it 24/7 if given the opportunity.

Happiness is creating new things, and to the extent that money enables this, it makes us happy.
That was when I worked on the business part of the company.
I don't know that it can really be characterized as a "network." That would imply more than one publisher. All they're doing is letting advertisers skin their widget.
"the shape allows the car to reach 62 MPH in 2.7 seconds with a top speed of 240 MPH"

People also thought the Aeron was ugly when it came out...
shape -> engine
Event Tickets Are Big Business: European Startup Invades U.S.
PB's karma per post is high because he often submits his own stuff, which readers like.
Morris has previously stated the worm was intentionally released to gauge the size of the Internet.
define: "attrack" - a combination of attack and attract. etymology: dyslexia.
I wouldn't sweat the liability oo much either, but why not just incorporate. In most states it costs $150.
I click some of these "Top X whatever" because I know in the worst case I won't have to read the actual article; only skim the titles in bold. Most articles are not worth even that, but the few exceptions pay off the little time I waste in the lame ones.
How a Billionaire Financed His First Startup
Creative startup financing lessons from a billionaire.
Agreed. Quite simply, why take the risk? It is such a low cost, and you get protected from liability arising from all sorts of low probability but high impact events, some of which you probably haven't even thought of.
It's cliche, it's from a blockbuster movie, but it's sort of apropos. "Why do we fall down? So we can learn to pick ourselves up." (Batman Begins)

My first company flopped (R.I.P. 2002). My second soared but didn't diversify and crashed. That was a hard, hard crash to handle personally, financially. My third is growing slowly, steadily and may have long term value as its industry matures. My fourth is on its way to success. I'm focusing on what it is that matters to me, not looking at what everyone else is doing (or more importantly how well others are doing) and staying true to myself, my talents and areas where projects I'm working on are opportunities, not just ideas. The distinction is crucial.

The worst that could happen? Sitting on a great idea without taking action for too long and regretting it later. The worst thing would be never to try, especially with the costs to entry where they are now.
http://www.knifezone.ca/toollogic/toolcreditcard.htm
Highest karma/submission
I was curious, so I figured it out:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39977
Congrats to Nostra
Isn't "karma / #stories" a bogus measurement, considering that karma is obtained both from stories and from comments? I (as I write this) have 89 karma, but only 8 points of that is from submissions...

How about computing [karma obtained from submissions] / [# of submissions] and [karma obtained from comments] / [# of comments] separately?
I recall nostrademons pointing out that most of his karma came from comments over submissions.