skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
IMHO, there is very little surprise, rather I would be surprised if Loopt & Yelp didn't partner up.

The combination of LBS + local information review is very popular, highly actionable and monetizable -- you can call it a trifecta or the holy trinity.
Agreed. His interview in Founders at Work hit home. Well, at least the part before he had a successful company and sold it for like $25M.
I'm still kind of new to this, would somebody mind explaining to me the pro's and con's of sharding?
Why not learn? Pick up a few books on CSS and you'll learn quickly. I highly recommend any of SitePoint's books --
In fact, that's precisely what we do. It's easy to see how you might have gotten the wrong impression, since our front page is deliberately light on technical details.

We're trying to bridge the gap between tech-savvy photo sharing -- using web pages and not clogging up people's inboxes -- and the vast majority of people who don't understand URLs and just want to see the pictures.

Our tool creates a web page that's under the user's control, just like you say, and it simply sends out an email that links to the page. But in an HTML-capable mail reader, you also get a nice grid of image links to the photo thumbnails. (Click a thumb goes to the larger version on the web.)

Hopefully, it's the best of both worlds. My mom (she's not a focus group) gets to see the pictures, and she doesn't need to remember a URL to go to or tell other people about. On the other hand, I don't have to wait five minutes for gnus to download her enormous photo attachments.
Do unsupported statements seem more plausible when phrased as questions?

Will Minneapolis become the next hot spot for all-night heroin parties?

Film at 11.
What about WebKit and Darwin, to name a few?
Hi Matt,

I've already read a few books on CSS and I definitely know my way around JavaScript, XHTML, etc. The point is that I'm no artist and I'd rather focus on what I do best: hacking. I want a person to assume the position of "artistic director" whose specific forte is web design and who will focus exclusively on UI, accessibility, and user experience.

Additionally, I wrote the above because I've been quite surprised to have not really met many folks through school or day-to-day life who are no-nonsense web designers.
Best Doll Maker
Best doll maker is place where you'l find best dolls online. All sort of dolls and doll dreesups from the best doll maker.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=228581
Well, here's some suggestions to get you started. Use words like "hours" instead of "hrs" and "please" instead of "pls". Also, "thanks" instead of "tks".

Additionally, you're not going to get very far if you honestly expect a mentor to sign anything for you; up to and including an NDA. They are doing you a favor, not vice versa.
Nearly identical implementation in Erlang:

qsort([]) -> [];

qsort([Pivot|Rest]) ->
qsort([ X || X <- Rest, X < Pivot])
++ [Pivot] ++
qsort([ X || X <- Rest, X >= Pivot]).

More: http://en.literateprograms.org/Category:Quicksort
I've been noticing this as well. I have a couple of friends who do design work now and I am CONSTANTLY sending work their way.

I know some designers get frustrated because the constantly see the "We just need a designer" posts out there now. It's kind of like when we see someone say "Oh yeah, we've got everything we need; now we just gotta get a coder to slap it together."
Ask YC: What do you use for functional testing?
I've tried Selenium (core, rc and ide), but there were issues with the HTTP referrer not being set properly.

Watir looks nice, but Firefox 3 on linux does not seem to be supported, and I don't want to use Windows/IE just to test.

Anybody have any other suggestions?
If your 4 year tenure is absolutely non-negotiable (or if you're not ready), then fiddle - let your hacker instincts take you places. Learn a scripting language (python ruby etc), write a blog, dissect apps, join an opensource project..

After four years of quality exploration, you'll have built up some formidable experience that isn't easily replicable.
instead of "Get photos from your camera to an email in one step." how about a simple flow chart with pictures, a camera plugged into computer then the computer with a gmail icon up on it... pictures speak easier than words... I also agree with the unzooming of the photos.
Ask YC: Feedback on my Startup please!
Hi,

This is the startup that I've been developing: www.ledova.com It's a site to help people share what they like/don't like about their job and other people could get an inside scoop of what's going on in the companies.

We have just released it so we definitely need a lot of feedback (and reviews =) ) from you guys! Also, would like to get more ideas for promoting the site, and getting more reviews and users?

If anyone wants to contact me directly you can email me at eric.ctwan@gmail.com
Yes, it's the best of both worlds. I implemented it on http://ourdoings.com/ in November, 2004. It has been one of the most exciting features.
The NSA records ALL TRAFFIC on the Internet
Can iPhone developers make a living just developing iPhone software?
Here's what you really need to know: YAGNI, YAGNI, YAGNI.

It is overwhelmingly likely that by the time you actually need to know about sharding, you won't be "new to this" anymore. :) It's a technique for sites with so much write traffic that a relational database running on one big machine with a lot of disks isn't enough to keep up. That is a lot of traffic, particularly if you're good at regular old SQL performance tuning, which is what you should learn first.

Anyway, I haven't studied sharding too closely myself because... IAGNI IAGNI IAGNI. But here's what I remember from spying on smarter people in hallways at conferences: Pro: You get to spread your database writes over multiple machines. Con: making an RDBMS do an efficient JOIN across machines, or enforce constraints across machines, or (god help us) execute an efficient atomic transaction across machines ranges from "annoying" to "incredibly effing difficult", which erodes much of the advantage of your RDBMS in the first place and causes people to start muttering about alternatives.
I hadn't really done any web programming before starting tipjoy. With a full time commitment, we went from start to launch in 3 months.

You should certainly be able to do side projects. The best part is that you don't need to try to make money, so you should focus on building something interesting and useful.

If you want to do tiny free projects for tipjoy, let me know :)
I couldn't agree more. However, I'm certainly not saying "We just need a designer"-- I'm saying "HOLY CRAP WE NEED A DESIGNER".

I absolutely respect web design and realize that it's a big deal which is why I'd love to involve someone with that particular talent in my startup and do so in a significant way.
It's been done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claria_Corporation
Oh, I'm sorry; I wasn't insinuating that you were guilty of this at all. I was just making the point that I know that quite a few designers don't really freelance any more because they're tired of being devalued that way.
Why wait 4 years? Why not join a startup (or technical company) now and start doing the things you want full-time instead of fitting them in around a job you don't value? You can learn a lot getting hands-on at the ground level, and if you want a mix of tech skills and business savvy then why not work at several startups (over time) and help grow them - you may get to do everything and anything from software/service design to marketing and PR. It is probably the best experience you can get if your aim is to start your own startup and will also equip you well for applying to places like Google.

If you really have to stay at the job for some reason, then I'd say in your spare time practice programming and building web apps around what you are interested and that solve problems you face. Launch them and see what happens. You may suck/fail at first, but over time you will definitely learn a lot, and will get better with each iteration you take - you never know one of them may really take off. You can practice business skills in growing your apps and once you have done it a few times, try doing it for other businesses (ideally in other fields too for some diversity to other markets). There are many courses/books that can teach you the skills, but if possible, find someone whose expertise you respect to mentor you.

Many successful businesses were, and still are, started by people in the same boat so please don't let worries about lack of skill/experience stop you from starting.
with an "more than" clause, or with exponentials you can solve that.
Burning seawater, water "catalysts", cold fusion, and now nothing but compressed air.

Please take this story with healthy skepticism. Until we see it in mass production, it's more likely than not that this story is not what it seems.
This is a pretty long article. The title here makes it sound like a business article, but it doesn't really strike me as such.

At the heart of the article is the philosophic question: Do animals think in the way humans do? Do they feel not only fear but anxiety? Do they reason? Or, are they thoughtless automatons, acting on instincts and learned behavior alone?

Turns out a lot of big pharma companies are developing doggy equivalents of a lot of human drugs like prozac and friends. Vets are prescribing medications for separation anxiety and other behavioral problems that were once addressed soley with training (or euthanasia).

If human drugs work the same way in animals, what does that say out about an animal's capacity to think and feel?

Or, turn it on it's head: If unwanted behavior is seen more often in animals that are in "unnatural" environments (for example, a horse left in a tiny stall all day, as opposed to horses in the wild), and we "fix" those animals with the same drugs we prescribe humans, what does that say about us?

Do we need drugs strictly because we lead unhealthy lifestyles?
Designing and Implementing Scalable Applications with Memcached and MySQL
Here is the PDF document: http://downloads.mysql.com/webinars/pdf/memcached_may_29.pdf
I must have skimmed those ones, the first ones seemed fine.
yeah, I thought the repeated photographs were weird too, made me think I wasn't getting the idea or something. I would replace them with a set of photographs that are obviously related. Tell a small story. A lot of work, sure, but its your home page, make them good, even if they are a tiny part of a screen shot. This is where you get people's attention. You have the Eiffel Tower, what about other scenes from Paris or Europe as if the person was traveling? After all, people will identify with travel photographs, and hence identify with you (its one of the psychological points of selling, make yourself seem similar to the customer).
His problem wasn't that the article was not relevant. His problem is that none of us can read it because its locked behind a subscription service.

This means that it either doesn't belong here (and is here by accident) or is spam trying to get us to sign up, which also doesn't belong here.
You mom should totally be in your focus group.
That makes sense, so this is a random project/joke/hack from a security consultant (funny how hacker is the wrong word).
If you're concerned with blocking, make sure stuff like css and important JS libs are one of the first 4 files that you serve. Also, you can just make some more subdomains for your assets. New browsers have increased the 4 files per subdomain limits too.
It's also too inefficient to belong anywhere in the vicinity of working code.

Beautiful, elegant, useless. Maybe that should be the Haskell motto.
Twittersphere on Barack Obama's FISA vote: Epic Fail
Assess Your Entrepreneurial Strengths
That has inputs and outputs as well, though there is an input-waiting process (which doesn't matter when you're modeling/designing the GUI).
Youtube has now Geo-IP discrimination of videos...
Under your Terms of Service, under the indemnification heading, the word covenants is spelled incorrectly.
Can't tell if you're kidding, but in case you didn't know I was ... :-)

http://www.vcwear.com/your-mom-is-not-a-valid-test-market/

http://www.startable.com/2008/07/10/before-starting-a-new-bu...
It has been in the news for at least 10 years, IIRC. There is a Yahoo group that has been discussing it for the last seven years. There was even talk of a bunch of air taxis being built for Mexico city years ago. For some reason, it never attracted serious capital or interest from the big auto makers until Tata came along. We'll have to wait and see. With the price of gas going through the roof, I figure it has a much better chance now than it ever had. One nice thing about it is that it uses regenerative braking.

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/mdiaircar/
Why is it that practically all startups need investors? Particularly web/software startups?

Seems that more and more startups could be started with personal funding these days and not really require outside funding.
that's what the "flag" button is for.

it could be that you don't have it yet, though. using the flag button requires a certain amount of karma points, i'm not sure how many.
I started using this last week and have had a very positive experience so far.
Fixed (modulu caching). Thanks!
I wonder why Nielsen drop (or don't include) the status of Japan.
Do they think mobile web market in Japan as Galapagos Islands?
The MDI Air Car is not a hoax. It actually exists and runs. Tata announced months ago that it would begin to manufacture a limited quantity in India. I guess they want to do a trial run to see how it goes and how it stands to wear and tear. The problem is that, if something goes wrong with the drive train, you can't just take it to the mechanic around the corner. Initially, you will be forced to operate it within a relatively short distance from the dealer.
Make something. The only way to keep your skills current is to use them, and the best way to expand your skills to to build something.

A great video interview appeared here a while ago. It's about how it takes a couple of years to really get good enough at a creative field to produce good work. You go through a period of creating work that's not as good as your ambition would like it to be. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE

It's worth the time to go through the process of creating a body of work. After doing it for a couple years, you'll be able to focus far more on doing something wonderful, rather than just doing /something/.
You're doing two filters with list comprehensions which you could switch with one span:

quicksort (x:xs) = let (a, b) = span (< x) xs in (quicksort a) ++ [x] ++ (quicksort b)
http://uncrediblehallq.net/blog/?p=66 < the long but WAY HAVE TO READ, version ;
If I had to make one choice, Brazil.

California is about one generation away from being Brazil. At any rate, anyone with an interest in South America knows that the best bet is Uruguay. Check out the flag for starters:

http://www.newspapercountry.com/Uruguay.png
I totally agree that as far as investors are concerned Silicon Valley has more expertise concentration. On the other hand, Silion Valley also has more number of startups seeking funding!

In a web startup where geographic locations are not a huge factor for the product development itself, it is harder to justify high cost of living with other benefits hotspots in US like Seattle and Silicon Valley provide.

My current startup is in Seattle and we are bootstrapping right now. We are strongly considering about moving to another country. Startups are about people, as we all know. Seattle definitely had better resources to get support, advice, and seek funding. However, we had to let it all go over the vast cost of living difference between India and US.
Interactive LED dining table
Enterprise Rails Tapping (Apple ships their first Rails app)
"You can't wait for inspiration. you have to go after it with a club." - Jack London

First of all congratulations for having a long-term plan. You know where you want to end up. That's big. And you're flexible enough that it can be a startup or a prestige company.

Micro-apps. Build something small like a Twitter visualization (twistori.com was built in a day, twittervision.com in 4 hours!), release it, build a blog to record your projects.

And I'd like to suggest broadening your portfolio: If it's all technology, it's all in one basket. Entrepreneurship is about taking on and managing risk. Outside the controlled world of compilers and stack traces, there is opportunity.

Consider taking on activities of varying risk. What are you scared at getting better at? Does it scare you to give a presentation? Join Toastmasters. Or ask a question at the microphone in a public forum (that's p.s.) Does it scare you to mingle in a room of strangers? Get a group of guy friends and go practice. Nothing to lose. Or start by going to a lecture and talking with the person you sit down next to. Does not having control scare you? Mentor or tutor a teenager. Or be the new guy in an interest group.
Yes industries like welding have been using high-pressure tanks for decades, but that's not high pressure tanks that are traveling at 70 miles an hour in a tight corridor surrounded by hundreds of other cars that likewise are traveling at 70 mph. Can you say chain reaction?

Compressed air is far more dangerous than gasoline. Gasoline is not a guaranteed explosion more likely its a fire.
Would you say it's more like glassdoor.com or coderific.com?
I had always leaned towards Argentina, but Uruguay sounds pretty good... beyond the kick-ass flag and general liberalness, what makes Uruguay so great?
Totally out of date but a lot of interesting material nonetheless: Michael Abrash's "Graphics Programming Black Book". Available online at http://www.byte.com/abrash/
If you are considering Argentina, you can infer a lot about the Buenos Aires tech scene from this:

http://osdir.com/ml/culture.people.kragen.journal/2007-09/ms...
Before the App Store “Opens”, it has already made Apple $55,000
Working from the Django trunk
Evan wrote bleak_house. Alongside the Nimble Method guys, he's one of the best known Rails tuners. He knows what Twitter's problems are because they hired him to fix it.
I'm sorry, but that sentence doesn't make any sense.

What is pressure stable?

And changing the type of gas has almost zero affect on how much energy you can store in it by compressing it.
It is not 'illegal content'.
guess i'm going to stock up on canned food and ammo...
also considered calling for legislation that would offer an explicit government guarantee on the $5 trillion of debt owned or guaranteed by the companies. But that is a far less attractive option, they said, because it would effectively double the size of the public debt.

Nice to know the kinds of things that the government is considering. I have this funny feeling that such statements are a hint to wealthy people to get an early start on the big capital flight bandwagon of 2010-2015.
I would like to see that in action, because it seems to me that allowing gas to expand that fast is going to drop the temperature of the gas so low it'll probably freeze CO2 out of the air.

And that process will probably rob a lot of the explosive force.

Can you compress gas so much that if it exploded it would liquefy? With a quick google I couldn't find an equation relating pressure drop to temperature in real air (not ideal gas).
this will have huge riple effect on the economy, and the financial markets. The goverment will either let them go under, and risk that mortgage issuing for average joe, stops overnight and a huge flight of foreign capital from the US, or take them over and de-value the dollar even more and create more inflation.

The sad part, is both Fanie Mae, and Freddie Mac were used to stash and securize bad mortgages, basically shielding away the banks that made the poor decissions to issue these toxic mortgages in the first place.
It is sad, but the rich is getting richer (and they took huge bonuses when all was rosy), and we all are paying for it now.

Either way, nuclear winter is comming. Even the SF Bay area is not feeling anything in this recession, other parts of america are reeling.
I'm not sure I see your point with the age thing. Is it relevant whether or not an open source project of a given age is better than a proprietary one of the same age? The economics of proprietary software ensure that there will generally be older versions in nearly every niche (especially consumer facing).

Also, if GIMP can't catch up in 14 years, will it ever? That's basically infinity in the software industry.
nice domain name and concept!

This software should be built into WiFi and standard digital cameras!
Dharmesh, I think you overestimate folks' personal funding. Most people don't have cash to both live and pay (even small) startup expenses for 6months - 2 years in might take to hit profitability or early liquidity.

That aside, there seems a strong correlation between liquidity and VC investment (even nowadays). The connections, maybe?

Of course, there are plenty of examples where you can involve VC at the END, like StumbleUpon did-- Garrett Camp chugged along with it in Calgary for 3 years before heading down to SV and getting it sold (if memory serves)-- once he got investors.
How to make a Geek
In my defense, it was a news source using a computer, and fooled a lot of "respectable" newspapers in the process.
Startup now!

Why wait? Find others or friends whom you can learn from or work a full time gig while paying a team or offshore developer to build your product.

THough you first need to have an idea. That is when that component of a startup is most vital. Later on not so much...

Who knew you had to be so adaptable. Learning that now being in Philly's incubator! Great learning experience!
What if there were no vertical bar? What if there were an up and down arrow that would appear only if there was more to see in that direction?

I agree though, it is disorienting.
Wow. For all these years, people assumed that the government would be stupid enough to provide an explicit guarantee for GSEs like Fannie Mae and now congress is out to validate that assumption. Talk about idiotic.

Then again, what will be even more idiotic is when the US Gov./Fed. start to inflate the currency to pay off this monstrous debt.

On an interesting related note: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121565255349741343.html?mod=...
Argentina? BA is nice, I agree, but the economy goes down the drain every twelve years. I'm not talking about US-style depressions with lost jobs and protests; I'm talking starving children, a different president every week, and politicians escaping in helicopters. Of course, if you arrive right after a flush, everything's cheap. But do you really want to deal with an economy as chaotic as your startup's?

I know of businesses that are really reluctant to do business in Argentina because of government corruption, particularly mining companies.

Brazil sounds better, but it isn't SV.

If I had to be in Latin America, I'd be (OK, I am) in Santiago. The country is run by engineer entrepreneurs, taxes are really low, the economy is very well managed (moreso than that of US, for instance) and labor is relatively cheap. But, having tried to do a startup here, I can see why SV is the place to be. You just don't hit other uranium atoms often enough.
The Britney Spears Problem: An algorithmic challenge