skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Four years is a lifetime!" - I know, belive me. And its not jail. I realized that being an entrepreneur is not the same as being a great programmer. There are lots of skills necessary, and the plan is to develop as many of those as possible with my current job so that I'm better prepared for my next one.
You're right - there's nothing at all in there about hackers or computers or startups.

And as for the contract, presumably it was also signed by management, not just the union.
Make cars people want.
Of those YC has funded: Jamglue, Heysan, Songkick, Tipjoy, and one that hasn't launched yet.
The main thrust of the argument is that "resources" implies some kind of average, that developers are interchangeable cogs in the wheel. But Peopleware taught us that there can be an order of magnitude difference between the best and average developers, so your scheduling and estimates are based not on some abstract "resource" but on the talent of the person involved. Talent matters. You have to build a winning team with talent, not by scheduling "resources" who you think are interchangeable. Those people are inherently NOT interchangeable due to varying levels of talent.
pretty sure kindle doesn't have a touch screen
A recurring theme with these responses seems to be to just go for it and don't worry about messing up because as long as you're learning along the way, you'll be better prepared for whatever the future holds. I think thats terrific advice!
Ideas are a tricky thing, because without experience behind you, you may seriously misjudge the market for your product. But there's only one way to get experience, right?

What do you mean by "That is when that component of a startup is most vital. Later on not so much..."?
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."
Will the Recording Industry Kill Pandora?
Great line I've heard elsewhere:

Socialize the risks, privatize the profits.
practically speaking, it would be all but impossible for a third party to add ogg support to the iPhone. you get audio files onto the device via iTunes, so it would have to be changed as well.
Ask HN: Any HN meetups in Greater Boston Area? WebInno anyone?
I was wondering if there were any regular meetups from HN in the Greater Boston Area? Is anyone planning on attending the WebInno event on July 15th (www.webinnovatorsgroup.com)?

I'm particularly interested in meeting with experienced Perl hackers (details in my profile).

Any other casual or formal meetups besides WebInno in the area that people know about?

Thanks!
The app download counts are now reset to 0.
...but you're also misleading... - no, I am not.

In fact I took care to say that Amazon stocks several million titles - they might not sell a copy of every one of those every month.
I don't go to the Register for news, so their linkbait headlines aren't a problem for me until someone submits them here, even if it's unchanged. So I will complain here.

Changing a "curiosity" headline to make it clear what the article is about is not editorializing (except in the most literal sense, so let me preempt any pedants on that point) or injecting opinion.

Example: "Yahoo! Researchers develop algorithms to select stories for front page"

Is that less intriguing? Yes. Will it get less karma? Yes. Will the people who are genuinely interested in the topic covered still click on it? Yes.
It also uses Python for it's scripting if I recall correctly, which is pretty cool.

Especially as the guys who end up learning this don't end up learning a set of skills only useful for Blender.
Tom may like to read about Paris Hilton and Harry may like reading about what President Bush had for dinner. I am not interested in both, but I do bother if some company gets funded, if some website gets bought or if someone writes a 'hello world' app in a hundred languages. I don't have the same interests as Tom or Harry. And featuring their likes on my headlines just because they clicked doesn't make an uber-cool feature or a handy tool. To me, it just sounds like a bad automated-Digg clone.

This is totally a commercial idea. They seem to be interested in the clicks and henceforth the dollars. The idea would have been a runaway hit if they tried to personalize news as per personal interests.

Well, this system cannot personalize news until they ask me to specify my interests and tweak the news personally for me.
It can be done with a Yahoo Pipes app ofcourse. But its still like using a calculator for 3+4. How about a direct feature - "personalize ur news".

One way to read such news is to use the Google News Search RSS feeds. It works for me.

I mentioned just a few days back, that I was working on a news engine - for news analysis and news search (it's for a contest and I'm working on it since I am a news buff). The idea is currently half complete since I have my exams on(will be over by 15th of this month). I found a simple way to personalize news :)
I just gave the idea a try and it does seem to be crappy, but its an easier way because that's the simplest data I have access to as a developer. Will post it here soon. I have to convert the app from php to python (going to run it on Google App Engine)

John McCarthy; that name reminds me of something...
"No one has yet buit a monument so high that a bird can't fly over it and shit on it" --John McCarthy

That's my favorite quote.

A bit of info if you don't know who John McCarthy is: the man who coined the term "Artificial Intelligence"

(-edited to add more-)
Yeah I couldn't find any references for a touchscreen via Google.
What you guys don't seem to realize or take seriously is that enough of this stuff (Obama, Iran, unions, etc...) will drive the quality of the site down, just like reddit.

"Non computer" stuff is often ok if it's just some random, interesting thing that's "food for the brain", but when you get into politics and economics (at least some kinds of economics) and stuff like that, it's just poison.
The Cost Of Online Video: $8 Billion And Counting
Sun has some aspects of their business, that are like a Web 2.0 company.

For instance, Solaris and OpenSolaris are given away free (Sun will even send you a free CD of OpenSolaris), so there are some number of Solaris users - but how much are they worth? How do you "monetize" them?
Best online calculator
I think the stupid SUV's are the only thing that kept GM around this long. They probably would have died years ago if they never came up with them (the damn things are pure profit).

As for Toyota-style management? It's difficult to do with strong, uncooperative unions. Want to replace 100 workers by robots? Not happening. Want to give workers decision making power, tempered by accountability for their decisions? The union demands more money for the decisions, and thinks that "accountability" means "talk to the steward."

There is a reason Toyota builds factories in Kentucky instead of Detroit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/business/04uaw.html?_r=1&#...

I'm not saying GM made no mistakes, but unions did play a huge role.
I wasn't kidding. :) The advice in that blog post is fine if users like your mom are not going to be part of your target audience, or if she'll use it just because she's your mom. But if you send her to the homepage and she can't figure it out, I think thats a great focus group. If she's not technical (obviously, I don't know your mom) and she thinks its a breeze, you've done an incredible job. I won't say more, since having conversations about people's mothers never seem to turn out good, but in this case, I think it would be great to see how your mom uses it. Note that I said "how she uses it," not if she likes it. Of course your mom will like it :) Er, hopefully.
modulu caching?
You'd think no phone has ever had user-installable software on it. In fact reading the article you would never know that until yesterday the iPhone was almost the only phone you could buy that couldn't run 3rd party apps.
This kind of technological inertia is not caused by actual risk and reliability issues as much as fear of public failure, scandal and lawsuits. You can see it in the entire aerospace industry. This is the reason the Cessna 172 is still one of the most widely used general-aviation aircraft used today, powered by 1960s-era Lycoming or Continental engines. There is a huge opportunity here, but every major manufacturer is afraid to make the leap. And given the current legal climate in the US, they can hardly be blamed - for instance, see http://www.aviation-law-news.com/html/fatal-lawsuit.html or http://miami.injuryboard.com/mass-transit-accidents/aviation.... These cases would never get this big if it was simply a matter of a car accident, but imagine how much greater the wolves would howl if the airplane involved used an "unproven airframe design" or "a novel type of engine".

In many ways the quasi-governmental airframe companies such as Boeing and Lockheed/Northrop are actually better, because they allow themselves to be closer to the theoretical bleeding edge. Clumsily though they may do it.

An accident is much easier to defend if everything seems to be in order. Just like with the leadership of technology companies.
When I click the PDF link, it goes to a 404. :(
Is Google heading down the Yahoo path?
Chinese YouTube 56.com Returns To Living
So what is it, then? Military? If so, I'd imagine there are lots of opportunities for a "very good hacker" to use and expand his skill set. Experience is key, so go after it. At this point, the thing I'm most curious about is why you're not giving us a bit more detail on your current situation.
I second that YouTube recommendation wholeheartedly. I clicked on it wondering if it was the Ira Glass video, and it was. Very helpful.
Leo Laporte Livecasting iPhone 2.0 Launch Right Now...
Because no other phone/mobile browser comes anywhere close to it in terms of features and ease of use?

For example the nokia n800 browser is terrible in comparison to Safari, using a stylus is a pain, and keyboard entry is slow. Also the battery lasts an hour or so.

Yes, it's open source, but that makes it hellishly hard to do anything with. Updating the firmware involves about 10 steps.
Ok, using logic 'n all, a lot of the arguments don't make sense. Which is sad, because put differently, I'm sure whoever wrote them could have made them effective.

The iPhone does not completely block free software. Last time I checked, there was free software available in the App Store. Developers are welcome to release their code I presume.

A lesser argument to the response that Apple decides what is and is not on everyone's phones is that anyone can create a web application, which Apple does not control.

If the author wants to call the $99 developer's fee a tax, I don't care. But it does have a purpose. You also get access to Apple's development program, and if you're distributing your applications for free (as this person seems to like), you get a free distribution platform and free bandwidth for people to download your app.

The iPhone does not expose your whereabouts or allow other people to track you anymore than any other phone in the United States does. How he got this, I have no idea. You can turn off the location based services that will stop any application from tracking you. Law enforcement in the U.S. can track any phone's location, so the iPhone is not unique in that respect. Furthermore, some people will want their location tracked so that applications can tell them what's nearby.

Now, I'm not against free software, but please, if you're going to argue for something, make it logical and rational.
IPhone go boom (poetically)
As a musician, it's interesting to read this. It speaks of stuff most musicians intuitively know and think about but in a language any engineer can understand.

I hope this encourages some people to pick up a guitar and have at it.
You have to opt in to location based tracking (although the cell phone company can always know where your phone is, and give it to law enforcement). If you turn off location based tracking, I believe all applications are supposed to reset and stop tracking you and ask for your permission again. We can always ask people to test this to see if developers have implemented it properly.
Apple's marketing chief spotted in Apple Store, comments on iPhone 3G activation snafus
The problem is to find a startup since almost all of them prefer to work in stealth mode and second is to convince them that you're right guy. So for example, I realy would like to work (even with $0 salary) on interesting project/startup, but all attempts to find something literally failed. Just for the record, I was looking for Python/C++/Java/Erlang (one or all languages) startups.
IPhone buyers love, hate their new toy -- Live on twitter
This is really a ridiculous article if you can call it that.
"iPhone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora."

Why do I care that a few cents of the price of my iPhone went in licensing the mp3 format from "Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer IIS-A".
As a user, it plays mp3 files. Which is all anyone cares about.

If it only played DRM files I'd have a problem with it and wouldn't buy it.

Looks like there could be a long wait for the new iPhone in the UK as it seems to be pretty scarce.
Exploring LISP on the JVM
I'm often tempted to disagree with the effective HN ban on political issues, because it leaves so many of the most important facets of life off the table.

But, alas, I think this is correct. This is a terrible forum for discussing political issues -- because the signal-to-noise in politics is very low (any political discussion is mostly about team-building, horse-trading, and tooth-baring, not problem-solving or analysis and certainly not software or technology) and we don't have the time to wade through waist-deep piles of personal statements, deal memos, and threats; because this site draws people from very diverse political backgrounds who will take a very long time to reach equilibrium if they start team-building, horse-trading, or baring their teeth; but mostly because the place just works better if there's some focus. It helps us to know when to shut up.

I interpret PG's mission statement not as an attempt to ensure that "anything of interest to anyone smart" is on topic, but as a signal that he doesn't want to be the Big Man who sets the agenda for news.yc. He wants the community to do that. And we have: political discussions get discouraged (using our polite jargon: "That's too reddit for this site") and I personally strive to limit my team-building, horse-trading, and tooth-baring efforts to the slyest possible implications. For example, I'm going to go mod up edw519.

It's not as if there are no other political forums on the web.
Why not instead have optional quality? Provide a set of approved programs but still let users install what ever they want.
Completely agree. I'd far rather the "locked down" nature of the iPhone than random issues, bugs and crashes.

For most people, the use case is to use it as a phone/browser/PDA etc. Not to use it to hack around with and develop apps for.
How many of you expect to die?
From http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/07/denpartment-of.html regarding this article.

"When GM offered the UAW more lavish benefits, it did so in order to induce the UAW to accept less generous wages. The money that GM paid in the 1990s and 2000s to fund pension and retiree health bnefits was offset by wages that GM did not have to pay in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Lowenstein appears to want to live in a world in which GM (a) gets a break on its wage costs in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s; and can do so (b) without having to pay any money to fund pensions in the 1990s and 2000s."

Bad management screwed GM, not not the Unions. GM ought to have set aside the money saved on wages to meet these future obligations. That they did not do so is just one of many examples of their management incompetence.
Many thanks for the explanation. Much appreciated.
But do other cell phones provide novices an SDK and a few simple functions to get position via GPS and do a HTTP POSTs while entering an item in "Joe's shopping list" application?

Perhaps they do, but without a constant connection to wifi or EDGE/3G that the iPhone has, you'd have to authorize it, in order for it to be sent. Probably not so with the iPhone. It's designed to constantly talk to the Internet (it's even got a new notifications framework that relies on communicating with Apple's servers).

I can't comment on whether or not you need to authorize each application in order for it to use the GPS APIs or not, but if you don't (which I assume you won't), this could be scary.
Got it. many thanks.
There have always been a few stories like this.

I understand that to someone who saw what happened to reddit, the sight of words like "Obama" or "Union" in a title is very alarming. But not all stories with those words in their titles are boring political ones.

Don't worry, I won't let News.YC go down that road. I'll munge the voting algorithm before I let that happen.
There's nothing HN specific, but there's an OpenCoffee group for startup-types that meets Wednesday mornings, 9:00 AM, at Andala Coffeehouse in Central Square (Cambridge). Good crowd and good discussion there.

Lots of good stuff on Meetup.com, and you can find a ton of tech-related networking events on: http://MarksGuide.com

See you at WebInno.
Why your "unfair" deal terms may be fair
I have quite a few ogg files. Converting to mp3 before using on an mp3 player is very annoying.

Plus, libogg is BSD licensed, so why not include it?
it'd be a nice to have, sure, but I don't think it's a deal breaker. Majority of people are likely to have mp3s.
It's nice not to add too much complexity and potential for bugs/issues...
Great jraines! You've got a point there. I would like to see headlines like the one you mentioned in the example. Straight-to-the point headlines. It makes reading easier. I think this point should be mentioned in the submission guidelines for Hacker News(and would better if its a rule). Simple headlines save time too. Example: I spend most my of my time with no access to a computer, away from home. I am browsing on a mobile phone with 8kBps internet speed. And simple headlines saves me page loading time. I usually avoid clicking on headlines that are confusing. (and thats why I use mobile lingo in most of my comments) :)

would like to see others' opinions on this matter(its a pretty serious one).
Sorry, odd wording I picked up from my college. What I meant was, I fixed it, but you might not see it right away because of various caches.
Not to mention 4 different Flashlight applications, each of which simply displays a white screen, and three of which the author has the audacity to charge money for.

Thus far the App Store selection is very underwhelming.
My life plan includes emigrating to the moon at age 80 because I figure the first few generations of settlers are going to have a high attrition rate anyhow and at that age I will be expendable. Also low gravity should be good for joints and heart...
I rather have the convenience of an iPhone and download books at 99cts from the App Store.

Some will say "the eyes blah blah the ink blah blah" but I tell you, I surf ten hours a day in my old monitor and have had no eye problems for the past 20 years.
I heard the same thing about iPods and when I actually used one I found them to be horrible.
pg has reduced the length of headlines few times now. It now stands at 90 chars. Also, pg has changed few of my headlines that I amended with some more info from the article and has reverted them back to the original. What do I think? I think pg is right on this issue. Rewriting headlines is a slippery slope since we all have our biases. I'd rather read the original headline and make up my own mind on the issue than to read what nickb or jraines thinks this article is about.

What you're asking for would be better served with a blog and not a link aggregation site.

Finally, I'm not getting paid for this work and I don't have much free time. Personally, I don't wanna waste my time trying to think up headlines since that's not my job.
Google has been like this for a long time. And its one of their biggest assets in my opinion!

Microsoft needs to keep a good focus. But Google and Yahoo? I don't think so. Obviously they shouldn't do something really unexpected, but if they can carry on improving and creating apps/sites - why the need to stop?
The screen on Kindle is nothing like a computer screen, XO or otherwise. To make images, it arranges colored particles using an applied electric field. To illustrate just one implication, it does not have any backlighting whatsoever, which means (1) there is no eye strain and you can read in direct sunlight, (2) it never becomes hot so you can read for hours, and (3) it holds images indefinitely without drawing electricity so battery life is very long.
The evolution of Socialbrowse
Thats a good point. What's your estimate on how much support you'd need to provide? I'm not being a pain here, I'd really actually interested to know how much you think you'd have to do, and where that intersects with making money to make the venture worthwhile in your eyes.
The "Turkish effect" -- why you've never heard of the world's #1 intellectual
That's a shame. We have to thank AMD for the x86-64 architecture ("64-bit for the masses").
Decades ago we used Kalman filtering in naval navigation systems - it was well-established engineering then (Rudolf E. Kalman developed his filter in 1960). The original article's title is somewhat misleading in that Kalman filtering isn't usually considered to be AI.

But it's very nice to see this article anyway, if only to know that those old boat filters are creating Yahoo's home pages. Hey, it might even be the same code!8-)) [Tip to Yahoo: Speed 'er up to 23 knots and, if you start getting significant outliers, you've got a rounding problem in your matrix routines.]
I think is worth reflecting about the last stages of life, and how you would like to live them.

For me I would like:

1- A Healthy life. There is plenty you can do, nutrition, exercising, regular check ups, etc.

2 - A productive life. Make sure that every day you produce something of value.

3 - Prepare to die. Understand that is going to happen no matter what.

4 - The present is the best time to enjoy life. You may become a millionaire, but all that money will not buy you more healthy time alive.
One time I was coding at the 1369 Coffeehouse in Central Square, and some guy came by and asked if I was there for the Hacker News meetup. I said I wasn't, but that I'd be quite interested. I'm not sure who organized that or if they have plans on organizing more. Any clues?
> Although I do consider Ning to be a "top tech firm" in the valley.

Take away Andreessen and it's just another general social network.
Don't worry, no one reads these comments ;)
I wish I could switch, DLS and Fiber are not an option here in MA. Comcast has me by the ... you know.

Yay free market!
See previous discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=217274

Hope to meet everyone at WebInno.
Another Blog Buyout: Guardian Pays $30 Million-Plus For Paidcontent
Anyone know what the reply was?
Interesting to see that the overhead of a secondary DNS lookup and TCP handshake can actually increase latency over just hosting the files yourself.
Would not be surprised if a large fab like TSMC bought them.
What do you think: is the search giant losing focus of their core business?

You have it backwards. It's the strength of their core business that enables them to make big bets on the future.

They've gotta know as well as anyone: in this industry if you milk your core business too long, it may become a dinosaur too quickly for you to react.
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AMD competed very well with Intel for years, only recently have they fallen behind with the dominance of the Core 2 Duo chips. I wouldn't count them out just yet.

Also, why would AMD who recently (2006) bought ATI sell it to Intel??? Makes no sense.