skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Quickker - team sport management
List me!
i think the age doesn't matter at all. whats matter thats is your resources and health to handle all the stuff.
I have a job offer at a startup, am I getting a good deal? Part 2.
When using a textbook it's also helpful to be able to search for a word or phrase. Besides, the Kindle right now isn't bad, and this is the FutureKindle that doesn't have any flaws yet.

I was going to say I was skeptical of textbook publishers liking this, but there are no used book sales on the Kindle!
Moopz Merges Fragmented FriendFeed Conversations Into One Place
Sending the Internets Through a Tube
Search Advertising On Google Offers Lowest ROI 
According to Efficient Frontier’s “US Search Engine Performance Report: Q2 2008,” based on data from a fixed set of large-scale search advertisers,
"Google accounted for 77.4% of US search engine ad spend in the second quarter, an increase of 2 percentage points over 2Q07."
(where is the typo?)
Yes, it seems this was 100% a GoDaddy problem.
You probably want to talk about Henry Ford who in fact started when he was 40. Ray Kroc (McDonalds) was in his 50's when he got the McDonalds franchise going.
Being a Better Programmer #2: Don’t Be a Missionary
Painless needle mimics a mosquito's bite
XKCD 451: Impostor
Atom-thick carbon sheets set new strength record
I was thinking the same thing.

On a side note, I think I understand why John works for Mozilla now. I used to think "Damn, John is such a great hacker. Why isn't he just starting startups". But working at Mozilla gives you a chance to really have an impact on the web at a much higher level. Working on a great tool like firebug or planning out new JS language features has a potentially larger impact....your work could be part of the success of many startups!!
Demographics Is Destiny
My grandfather has a saying - "The mind is like a diamond in the rough and education is polish for the mind". It's very well possible that college doesn't fit you or that you don't fit college. At the same time please consider that if you hunker down and slog through it, you might have a large awareness for opportunities that make themselves apparent by the time you finish with college. If you drop out consider that your awareness to what's hot might be confined to what you are tuned into at the moment; I will not discount that you might possess the ability to spot what's hot in a few years from now, but I will say that having an education will definitely help with this skill.

Consider taking a quarter/semester off or perhaps even a year off, but don't commit to fully "dropping out". I would also recommend talking to a counselor (somebody with a PhD). This is going to sound funny, but try to get in touch with your feelings about your current situation.

One thing that should be a concern for you is that you have asked a fairly well known community for reasons why you shouldn't do something, yet you seem to have plenty of counter arguments/responses to people's postings. Sometimes people are going to tell you things you don't want to hear. Does this mean you should follow their advice? Not necessarily; however you should think about it and give it some more thought.

For real dude, I wish you the best. Just think about it before actually committing to it.
Yahoo says it's game for $33-a-share MS offer
Monitoring number of SQL queries in MySQL
a way how to monitor number of SQL queries on MySQL server.
A tiny genetic change may help explain why AIDS is so common in Africa
Robots are getting cleverer and more dexterous. Their time has almost come
DropCard Aims To Make Business Cards Obsolete
Dude, you are in a unique opportunity to hammer out a fantastic work ethic. You do seem to have a drive to get somewhere, that is for certain.
Links, Sex, and Application Fluency
Ask YC: prove commitment within two months?
I am worried that my CV doesn't really mark me as the ideal founder. It seems to me I wasted so much time in my life (35 years old now), and even the projects I finished successfully (most I didn't finish) usually took too long, and did not reach the scope I was hoping for. In essence, there are not many achievements I am really proud about. It might just be my personal assessment, but still (agents love my Java consulting CV, but it doesn't mean anything to me). I have even publicly admitted to burnout syndromes on HN - big red flag? My karma also shows that I procrastinate a lot...

Anyway, I wonder about your opinions: is it possible to turn around that impression within two months, which is the time I could hopefully dedicate to preparing the next YC application?

I suppose the obvious path to take is to work on a demo day and night, and anyway, giving up is not an option (I might just have to try without YC funding). But still, I am curious about suggestions and opinions.

It is of course also the question if I will be able to pull it off, since historically I tended to get sidetracked. Why should it be different this time? It's not that I don't believe in me, I am just trying to be realistic - for this time to play out differently than the previous attempts, maybe I should have a better grasp on what went wrong and how to counter it, and I am not really sure I have that.

For YC application I have some hope to also come up with an intriguing idea, even though they say they don't care about the idea so much. But what about something like, say, Anybots? They ask for cool projects I have done, and I don't have any - so I didn't even apply in the end... Again it seems kind of obvious to just try to make something cool in the future. Anyway -maybe this post is just weird, or maybe some interesting comments will come in...

Edit: the question is of course a bit related to the "am I too old to startup" type of question. While I demand of myself to be intrinsically motivated, it might be too much to ask. Hoping to be accepted into YC (for example) could provide a good motivation boost.

The one thing all my successful projects had in common: I didn't do them alone. I might still have been the driving person behind them, but it seems I need to have at least some other person take an interest to actually go through with it. (I know that is not the kind of motivation YC provides, that is what co-founders are for. But working towards the application would have an effect, compared to working towards a void).
Startups and the role of capital and investments
"Whether or not human produced carbon dioxide is a major cause of impending climate change (as is being debated in the two articles of this issue), the issue of energy “production” by our Earth-bound societies must be faced. Fossil fuel supplies may become unavailable in this century – or the next – but in a finite system, obeying the laws of thermodynamics, non-fossil energy sources will have to become available to mankind, sooner or later (within the foreseeable lifetime of our planet)."

-- From the original APS article http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/editor.cfm
I'm taking the summer quarter off from Monday, so I'll see what happens. I definitely agree with your grandfather, though - I have been in college for two years, and I've witnessed the polishing on myself.

I've been talking to a lot (4+) of people with PhDs, both counselor and not, regularly for over a year now. I think I understand what you mean by getting in touch with my feelings. It's difficult to do it myself, and since I have so many theories, difficult to do with anyone else, as well.

I've been a little obsessive in the replying. I certainly don't mean to be rude! I think I'm too impulsive, and trying to have the wrong kind of conversation here.

Thanks, though, for your time.
"Learning How to Learn": Idries Shah
Help a fledgling professional programmer makes some important career decisions.
I've been programming in some capacity since I was 8 years old (AT&T GW-Basic babeeeee) and am now 20 years old. I code primarily in C#/.NET (Can't do Mono, don't care for it.), C/C++, Assembly, Python, and I'm presently learning Lisp. (Yay Repl.) In particular I have seem to have a knack for reverse engineering, debugging, and code optimization.

Here's the deal, I went to uni for a single quarter, but had to drop out because I couldn't get any loans.

My Father's income disqualifies me for federal assistance and loans of any kind, and he refuses to cosign a private loan, so I don't seem to be able to get any money for school. Furthermore, my mother doesn't have the credit to cosign a loan (recent bankruptcy), and my father refuses to help me at all in going to school.

I did for about four months work as a programmer, for a systems migrations company. I was hired primarily because of my debugging knowledge, although it never came into play. I ended up creating an arcane mainframe data file parser in C#. However, I separated from the company and started my own business (not in the field of programming though, because me and the fellow I started it with couldn't find any contracts :( ) and went off on my own. The reason I left is because I was exempt salaried and I was being forced to work 70+ hours a week, refused access (without cause, there was no NDA on the data) to example data files for me to work with (I was working in the blind. This is unbelievably hard.) and various other reasons.

Oh right, and I was getting paid $1600 a month. Not the worst I've ever been paid, but considering the workload and stress, yikes.

Kind of regret leaving now, but it was all I could do to maintain my sanity.

Worked for myself, in various capacities since April 07, recently had to get a regular job because the company basically went down the tube for a number of reasons. (One of which involved being screwed over by UPS and PayPal at the same time.)

Honest-to-god, all I want to do is work as a programmer for a living, but I couldn't get anyone to hire me despite my knowledge/experience because of my lack of a degree. I've talked to a financial officer from a local community college and it doesn't seem immediately viable that I'll be able to go back to school.

Are there any worthwhile programming certifications that would be respected and known, and allow me to get back in the field? I'm basically paid $9 an hour to post on ebay at my current job, and I feel like I'm being wasted.

Is there some alternative that would allow me to go back to school? I'd personally love to just go to school full-time and focus on my studies. (Vigorous auto-didact.)

For that matter, anyone want to hire me? :D

Thanks to anyone who can offer any advice!
Oh, I'm based out of Columbus, OH, but I'm not especially beholden to the city.
And they're coming to the Triangle in NC... awesome!
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…. your code
I'd get the heck out of there, first of all, and second, dedicate some time to open source work, which is a great way of 1) proving your abilities, and 2) meeting people.

It's doable: I got my first programming job in my early 20ies, with no college. Good luck!
Why Silicon Valley Should Be Worried
Although that's true, the new account won't have any karma, which actually matters on Hacker News, since it affects whether you can downvote, etc.

So while banning certainly won't have the same effect as on S.A., it can be useful despite how easy it is to create new accounts.
Actually I contributed a great deal to Ubuntu. I did some multimedia/userspace/64-bit debugging and I helped out with the tech support in #ubuntu. Nothing with my name stamped on it though, I just threw bugs at MOTUs. :\

Where would you recommend as an alternative to Columbus? I seemed to have the impression we had a decent IT/Software Dev market here. (indeed.com/salary says the avg C# coder makes $85k. shrugs) That's partially why I was disheartened, thought I was having trouble finding a job in the context of a good market.

I'll look into contributing more time to open source stuff.
That sounds fantastic. Wish there was a NYC location.
Sequence of Miscalculations
Wasn't John a former YC fellow?
In terms of open source, I think you get more bang for your buck in terms of fame and fortune by working on your own projects, if they're relatively successful, than by playing a small role in someone else's. Sad but true.

In terms of Ohio... I've never been there, and I have a strong bias against flat places (my home office here in Innsbruck is higher than the entire state of Ohio!), so I'd head to somewhere like California, Oregon, Washington, or maybe Colorado, as that's a bit closer to where you are.
VHDL free Tutorial
Hooray

This SERIOUSLY made my day.

Wish I could buy him a beer, dinner, a "massage" ;) at one of the local places (it's legal here) if he is so inclined, a big bag of chips AND a big bottle of Mountain Dew . . .

I salute the man.
i actually like the macbook/MB Air KB (i think they're similar if not the smae) better than MBP. But the fullsize Apple wired keyboard is light and durable enough to carry around in a backpack with you, and the keys have the feel of the macbook KB.

Keyboard fix: call Apple. Lots of times employees in Apple stores are too busy to spend the time it would take to properly diagnose a problem .

non-apple product: in the US, hit big box stores, Costco, Office Max, best buy, pound on the keys, look at displays carefully. You have to spend time with a laptop to discern if the KB, display, heat, fan noise, etc are all tolerable in your workspaces. Those are my top deal-killers (always carry a couple mice around with me, never use trackpads, ) Some places (Costco, target) have 90-day return policies
Note that although serializing simple values (like numbers and symbols) to urls works, serializing big data doesn't work because urls have a length limit.

What I was trying to explain is a system that stores the data on the server and passes pointers to this data to the client. Web applications that use databases already work this way. The id/primary key column of a database table is the pointer.

To serialize a closure you generate ids for the values of the free variables. Then you save the values in a hash table and send the ids to the client (instead of the actual values). To deserialize a closure you fetch the free variables from the hash table.

This system doesn't work yet because this hash table keeps growing. Every time you serialize a closure you put the free variables in the hash table. This is wasteful because some of the values might already be in the hash table. This is simple to fix; just look if the value is in the hash table, and if it is you return the existing id (this can be done efficiently by having two hash tables: ids->values and values->ids).
Two Words: Colonel Sanders
Sometimes a decision you make isn't black and white. Remember, you can use logic to rationalize decisions that other parties may see as illogical (e.g. your well-meaning parents). They say if you want to buy something really badly - wait 30 days and then see if you want to buy it. I'd like to suggest the same - wait at least 30 days before deciding.

College, in short, is a basic requirement to get a white-collar type job in the United States. If you drop out of college, you are differentiating yourself (in a bad way) from getting hired at a typical company. Startups are more flexible when it comes to hiring.

I would have lunch with a mentor who is at the stage where you would like to be in 2-3 years and ask them for their honest opinion. If you don't have a mentor, focus on finding one this summer. You can even email people you don't know but admire for their advice - asking doesn't hurt.
"Write a blog that people want to read and provide consulting services that people want to pay for" is a special case of "build something people want", right?
read samuel-ullman's "youth" http://www.prmvr.otsu.shiga.jp/library/master/SamuelUllman/Y...

dunno if lot of folks here have already read it.
Pradipta's Rolodex: Ruby on Rails Reverse Flash Mob
Or Opera.
Aren't those all things that will cause us to stop polluting, not reasons to stop polluting? If the price of a polluting fuel goes up, because it's scarce, it acts as a tax on pollution.

And the density of dangerous particles in the air has gone way, way down over the last few hundred years in large cities. So that seems like less of a concern.
I don't like reading stories like this. There been lots of threads about keyboards, RSI and work habits (some success stories)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199493

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104977

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224604
Lightweight Grid Control for jQuery
You are thinking too much. If your idea excited you, just get to it. Stop thinking if you can do it or not, just start trying and see if you enjoy the process.
> Anyway, I wonder about your opinions: is it possible to turn around that impression within two months, which is the time I could hopefully dedicate to preparing the next YC application?

Yes. The hardest thing is to get it going. And even, if you didn't get accepted into YC, you would have started a habit of creating and working on projects that you want to work on. Which is invaluable.

What is your definition of a cool project? I've posted about this before - and I hate to sound like a broken record player but some of the most interesting projects were done in a very short time. Yes, you might not be able to create something in 4 hours but once you get the momentum going, a weekend project might produce something.

"So, imagine my amazement when I had a glance at Twittervision, which was created by David Troy using Ruby on Rails in 4 hours"

In the fair chance, you haven't heard this Ira Glass segment about the process of creating/making (which I learned about from News.YC) - it inspires me and may well you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE
I think that looking to 'validation' from investors demonstrates some level of insecurity about your idea.

And it leaves power in the hands of investors.

Don't believe for a moment that all investments were good idea (obligatory pets.com reference here).

There's power in looking for validation elsewhere: users, competition, press. If you get it from there, the investment will follow.
Google and the Real Search for Meaning on the Web
Why people buy the wrong house
Isn't the point of science to debate? Ideally based on data?
Most of these aren't business ideas. They're features.
Three vulnerabilities every web application developer should know about
Fair point - also, the law of sunk costs. What is past is past, ideally I should only look forward (except for learning from mistakes). It's not always easy not to worry, though.
Not guilty plea from cybercoup suspect
I have to second that Ira Glass recording - it's just a very "Hey - that's what happened to me too!" type of piece.
Thanks, will watch the video at home.

I definitely try to make my projects simpler and shorter, especially because I worry about my endurance. One problem is that I constantly have new ideas that often seem even simpler than the one I am currently working on. So it is tempting to switch to the even simpler project, which ultimately leads to too much distraction.
If you just measure clicks to conversions, I agree that Google gives you less quality clicks. But that's only one aspect - what about brand awareness? You'll never get brand awareness going if you ignore google in favor of the others.
Disown your father.
I was 33 and I had always been an "idea" person but I had never finished any of them; I'd barely ever even started them. I had a new idea that I knew would work and I just started working at it a few hours a week, then 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, then pretty soon I was working 40-50 hours a week for a client and struggling to find the 30+ hours my company needed. It took me about 3 years working part-time to get my company where I could go full-time that way.

Is it possible that might fit what you're looking to do?
It's a tough situation; I was in a similar circumstance including parents salaries disqualifying me for financial aid (my father passed away a month before I started college, but the lookback period for financial aid is 3 years of income. Unfortunately he made 3/4 of our family's income and after his death we couldn't easily afford college).

The reality is this: without a degree, and no experience people have to take you on your word that you know what you're doing, and they're loathe to do so. You're going to have to probably deal with low pay until you get enough experience to be able to convince someone you know enough to pay you the salary they'd pay a grad. It may not be a great situation but I did it as well. My first 'real' job was $8 an hour "tech support" for a mom & pop ISP that involved 10% phone support, 40% systems administration and 50% programming. I got overworked and beat on, but eventually I got enough experience to jump to a 'real' programming job (who also underpaid me and overworked me, but a year there gave me 2+ solid years of demonstrable experience and I was able to call the shots a bit more).

Continue your work on Ubuntu and other open source projects. Not only will it continue to build experience, and get your name on projects which you can hold up to a prospective employer, you will get to know other developers who might be in a position to help you find something better.

The pay and the hours will suck at first, but it improves. You can't be aiming at an $85k target with no experience though without coming out disheartened. Focus on the experience first, and THEN the money. It follows quickly in hand if you do it right.

Since nobody mentioned it, New York tends to have a pretty decent market with a fairly broad skillset. You're always best off of course moving to a city for a job you already have, rather than moving to a city and then finding a job. You might find yourself in a messy situation if you just move blindly. There are still a good bit of companies that will pay moving expenses - at the LEAST, if you're clear in a cover letter that you're looking to move to a market with a more established IT industry, and you'll pay moving on your own it won't disqualify you just because of location.

Good luck!
Google Buys Russian Contextual Ads Service for $140m
There are some truly free universities. But you've still got to pay for essentials. The MIT curricula are on the web somewhere for free. Including texts.

If you do your own open source project, it can work for you. It's hard work and it can stereotype you. If you do a great job at building a new test thing for, Ruby, say, you'll have a hard time escaping the stereotype for 'test' and 'ruby'. But it can work.

You can lie on your resume and then work crazy to get your jobs done. For certain lazy, pointy-headed bosses and certain smart and ambitious programmers this might be the best solution. You can easily do better than the idiots these fools would otherwise hire. If you do this then change jobs every 2 years. You'll then have enough of a real resume that you can drop off the original baloney.

Actually stealing the money to pay your way through school is against the law and the hard time simply isn't worth it.

I have friends in university administration and another whose a college guidance counselor; They say there are many more scholarships available than people think. If you're willing to dig you can find some. There are often local scholarships available, for example, there might be something from the banks or the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus. Or your church. Or your dad's union, or business group.

Spend a day on the web searching for federal and other scholarships. I understand it works.
One idea - get your IT resume together, see if anyone you know from your tech days is hiring, and fire it off. Don't let a lack of college stop you.

Another idea - do a bit of networking in the city (meetup.com groups etc) if you want to stay there. If not, probably soft-relocate and couchsurf in San Francisco or Palo Alto, then network there.

With your background, you'll get hired in no time.