skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The more people move to Silicon Valley to start their venture, the more time will pass before its easier to do so in their hometown.

You're placing the value of hope that the future will be better in your hometown over the value of the fact that things are better right now in Silicon Valley. You and I both hope that, in the future, an entrepreneur-friendly culture will grow in many places. But, I'm accepting the reality that for my current business to succeed today, I need to take part in that culture today.

If you're willing to forego success today in exchange for helping other people in your hometown have success in the future (distant, but questionably made nearer for your willingness to stay home), then we're talking about different questions. Of course, I happen to believe you have to have some success under your belt in order to make a real impact on your hometown's startup culture. Random dudes who are passionate about startups is far less effective than random dudes with millions of dollars and a proven track record of building one or more companies who are passionate about startups.

And then we're back to the question of, "How do I best insure my business is a success?" If it's a technology startup the answer is often, though not always, "build it in Silicon Valley".
> This isn't some benefit dolled out by a controlling group...

The difference is that the government actively prevents large classes of investments from being made, and the weight of this restriction falls most heavily on startups, which lack the institutional knowledge to navigate such obstacles.

> Startups don't have to exit...

True enough. However, look at it from the standpoint of a bargaining position. Acquiring companies have enormous leverage back they're able to offer people their first few million. If an IPO is easier, then it becomes a more attractive option. This might not affect you as an entrepreneur, personally, but it does affect the market for startups.

> That would be correct if you assumed that the talent pool...

True, but even the most acute startups are vulnerable to mistakes in hiring. And the average quality of hacker at Google or Amazon or Microsoft may even be higher than most startups. The difference in productivity might be accounted for by institutional baggage alone.

> Isn't what this article proposing another form of kickback?

I don't believe it is. A social safety net for everyone is quite different from, say, a multibillion dollar infusion into one industry in wall street, or massive pork-barrel public works projects later abandoned for political motives, or monopolistic support of contractors such as Halliburton, or corn subsidies, or our new reinvestment into Nuclear without a discussion involving wind power. It seems almost completely different.

Eliminating all kickbacks, if I understand the strong libertarian position correctly, includes eliminating things like fire departments. When some theory of values, however intuitively appealing, starts contradicting so powerfully what we have reason to think good, I call question to the theory.

> I, for one, don't envy the position of large corporations at all.

I either. But if startups are naturally more productive, then one should at least acknowledge the strong advantages given artificially to their bulkier cousins.
I don't understand the surprised face.

Would you (post author) rather pay $599 with a 2-year contract or $199 with a 2-year contact? Do the math.
I agree. But I think if the center of technology does go somewhere else, it won't be because that other place catches up to the valley, but because the valley screws up and some other city can take its place. For instance, if the punishment for violating patents became life in prison, civil rights in US kept falling, the US put up larger barriers to skilled immigrants, acquisitions became heavily taxed, and/or a "windfall tax" was applied to Silicon Valley to pay for the economic depression elsewhere in the US, SV would very quickly die.

Between a place like Singapore catching up and SV falling behind, I'd guess a shift in who's in the technology hub would likely be caused by the latter.
The bar isn't that high. I got approved, and I'm just some dude. I think much of it had to do with how soon you got into the approval queue.
Why Arc is good for video games
Two words: crocodile tears.

I'd think I'd trade 80% of the sexist men in this industry for a few more sexist women.
I would recommend taking the time to read the article. If you did read it you would find the entire post to be 100% accurate.
I think you're over-reacting. There's nothing wrong with talking about the impact of a failed venture...in my experience, it's usually less damaging to ones ego and lifestyle than losing a regular job. Though my experience may be non-representative.

Nonetheless, most grownups understand that things don't always work out, and that it's not sufficient reason not to pursue ones dreams.
A "strong safety net", if done right (his minimum income suggestion is a bad idea in more than one way), doesn't mean people can just keep going forever. They can still fail, and fail fast, just that some of the "black swan" type risks with disproportionate downsides aren't a worry. Risk/reward calculations should be about looking at foregone opportunity costs (which are certainly significant for most capable hackers) rather than at "oh ####, my daughter needs an operation, and there's a problem with the insurance".
friends ?
Amortizing the benefit fits better with periodic payments. It's easy to imagine getting $10 of increased benefit monthly if a site loads 3X as fast, with more accurate GPS. I don't like the lock-in though.
I lost $30,000 of my own money when my startup failed back in the day. It kind of sucked.

I could have used that money to get a master's degree, or put a down payment on a house.

I didn't have to live on the street and go to soup kitchens, but startup failure did set me back about 5 years economically. I had to work at jobs I did not particularly enjoy, and live in shitty shared roommate situations for longer than I would have liked in order to get out of debt.

If I had simply taken the job I was offered at Google way back when instead of trying to do my own startup, I'd be as rich as Marissa Meyer right now.

So yeah it isn't that bad and you do recover but it isn't the greatest experience.
You scared me when you claimed that Hackety Hack is "on hiatus".

But, no, a look at http://hackety.org/ suggests that _Why is just on one of those epic hacker side-tracks, like Knuth went on when he took a decade-long break to invent TeX. To make Hackety Hack work well cross-platform, _Why had to invent a cross-platform Ruby-based toolkit for web-like apps (Shoes) and he's still kind of polishing that. So I don't think Hackety Hack is dead, yet. It may merely be cocooned, preparing to burst forth like Mothra and blow us all away with hurricane force.
I have a collection of scripts I'm not happy with and I've been looking around for a good cross-platform language-independent package manager that handles dependencies in a smart way for some time now. Although I've looked at several of the tools listed here http://www.edos-project.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WP2StateOfTh... I have yet to find something that runs everywhere I need it to and is worth switching over to.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with, especially if they do a good job managing non-lisp packages.
Video of the WWDC 2008 Keynote Address
I wonder what the terms will be like here in Canada. Since Rogers is providing it, I am sure the terms will be absolutely abysmal compared to ATT.

My predictions:
- phone will be more expensive
- you will not get unlimited data
- you'll need a 3 year contract
- you will once again feel ripped off by the horrible wireless industry here in Canada.
It's on Lulu here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2609902

It's moving to Amazon hopefully tomorrow, which is why I didn't link to it anywhere. I'll probably post it to reddit tomorrow at some time. Nonetheless: the book is very high-quality, if a bit glossy, and Lulu's store is a very effective one. There's a full preview, too.
I hope other big companies drop support as well. It would immensely simplify all of our lives if we didn't have to support that crappy old browser.
A screencast is not representative of actual coding. They already know what they're typing, and a few typos seems to dramatically slow them down. But, in real programming, you spend 80-90% of your time looking up library functions, flipping through your own code, reading comments, A/B testing various algorithm ideas, fixing the rendering in IE (actually this is probably 90% of your time...the other 10% is divided amongst all of the other activities), etc.

If you're spending more than 10% of your development time typing, you're probably coding things in the most naive way, and producing a lot more code than you should be. But even so, in six months, you'll probably be spending 90% of your time reading your code, because it's so verbose.
That's what I think Lulu's marketing edge is, actually. It's free for you to publish, and the quality is surprisingly decent. I don't like thinking of it as self-publishing (I do intend to try my luck with agents and publishing houses, though). Rather, it's a sort of site for entrepreneurial writers. Your works sell entirely depending on your writing quality and on how well you advertise. The job falls on your shoulders. And you can pay Lulu to help, but come on, that would be cheating. ;-)
You don't need to ask if a bubble has burst. It's painfully obvious.
Tom West on entrepeneurship
'To be an entrepreneur, he says, "you have to be interested in networking, even with fools."'

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/soul_pr.html

I think there's some other stuff in the article that might be relevant to Hackers, too.
So I loaded it into memory, but still SELECTs which are true for 99% of the table (10 million+ rows) are taking 1 min 7.95 sec, which is way too long.

I guess the best way to do this is just to create many tables which are subsets of the data for queries that return large amounts - and then come up with an algorithm which selects from these subsets based on the query? For example, if a>1 returns 99% of the data - create and store a table with this selection and if someone selects where a>1 AND b>5, query the subset.

I don't know. If I do that, I will end up with GBs and GBs of tables. I wish there were some magic algorithm to make things 10x faster.
O, Engineers!
If you mean that the Android platform itself probably won't be as innovative as iPhone, you're probably right. However, I think an open platform makes for a lot more potential for innovation on top of it.
If you'd be willing to share more details, pls email me wschroter at yahoo
It's definitely a growing trend. Google doesn't seem to support IE6 in the new Gmail interface (the old interface and the HTML-only still work).

If you're building a new app and don't have stringent compatibility requirements from your customers (a government contract for a site designed for people who might still run Win98 and use IE5), I don't see any reason to bother with IE6 compatibility anymore. The small number of extra customers you gain is unlikely to be worth the developer time.
As most readers here already know, scribd is a YCombinator startup, so it's a useful feature for news.YC to have.
He sounds a lot like me. I am a musician and I don't buy music. It doesn't make any sense where there are so many things to listen to for free online, everywhere.

If NPR publicly tracked all the music snippets used by show/date/time, I'd be buying a lot more music. Or if my stereo could display what I was listening to at the time I was listening to it (like XM, but in all its detailed glory), same thing.
NCMR keynote
They'll both be run-time errors, hopefully they throw an exception.
Congrats Sam and Loopt - I am bursting with excitement!
Now Apple's visionary for deciding not to support a browser? The reality distortion field is stronger here than I thought.

When you're building a product for customers, the last thing you should be concerned about is saving developer time if it means your less savvy customer base is giving you enough money to make that time worth it.
They've actually gained a ton of ground in their PC market. Apple doesn't target every Joe on the street like most Windows PC makers. Just as Mercedes does great in the small luxury car market and poor in the large consumer market, Apple does great in the small high end market and poor in the larger inexpensive PC market.

FYI. Their stock price has gone through the roof over the years. Currently their Market Cap is $160B to GOOG's $175B, and in the past 5 years has far outperformed GOOG.
Apple changes iPhone business model
rather pay 399 for 24 months of cheaper service costs. that 399 equipment cost can easily be lowered. buy refurb, buy used, marketing promotions from retailers, etc. but not much will lower that monthly cost.
Newsweek says "Nerd Girls" becoming more prominent, mainstream
Thumb should stay out of ass, not up it...
DiCaprio to play Nolan Bushnell in Atari movie
Vertical Search, Social Networking, User Generated Content and Web 2.0
Hi, I was curious if anyone had a list of Web 2.0 concepts that people are applying in different ways and the companies that use them. For instance, a basic list of what I was thinking of would be:

Vertical Search- (Kayak, etc)
User Generated Content- (wikipedia, search wikia, etc.)
Social Networking - (linkedin, Facebook, etc.)

Also, I was curious if people had a list of problems that startups are trying to solve. Such as…

Monetizing Video on the web etc.
Monetizing Mobile Applications
Solving Internet Fraud- (fraud sciences, etc.)
Etc.

Anyway, I was curious if someone could point me in the right direction. Thx
What makes you think my comment would have been different if she had not been a woman, but a man? I have experienced enforced comments, and that was in all men environments. I have complained about it against men, too.

I feel confident enough from my experience to say that her commenting rules are bullshit. I gave the reasons, too: comments are bad because they go stale. Enforced comments lead to ridiculous comments and tedious typing work that is resented by developers. If she really has found a way around that, it would be sensational, I would love to read an article about it. If she has several mandatory comment fields in the code, it is essentially just a TPS report translated to coding. Before you can write any code, you have to fill in a form - that can't be fun, not matter if the boss is male or female.

Maybe she is still a super-coder, it is not as if she is the only one coming up with awful rules in face of the unsolved problem of managing IT projects. Most managers probably resort to such means eventually (that's why the TPS report joke exists), and then forget to switch back when it doesn't work out. That is why big companies become horrible work places in the long run. Now she works for a big company, so maybe she does a good job for that environment - I don't mean that as demeaning, I guess somebody had to do the corporate stuff (I actually envy corporate folks for their endurance and staying power). I merely pointed out that I loathe that kind of thing. If you like it, more power to you.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this really has nothing to do with sexism. On the other hand, you display exactly the kind of "political correctness" that makes people resent issues like sexism, because it is just used as a manipulative tool (you can always brush off criticism by crying "sexism").
What about Lego Mindstorm?
No, he's really that bad. I took the photo. I kept telling him to rotate the pieces topwise with his main finger, but he just wasn't getting it.
Is anyone else quite disappointed in this announcement? I was not happy with my Tiger->Leopard upgrade, and Snow Leopard is simply... Apple fixing Leopard. Making OS X a stable OS (again)... Snow Leopard is going to be what Leopard should have been in the first place.
"You've also taken the most absurd interpretation of her remarks"

Where do you read that? I have not referred to her remarks in any way, I only referred to the practice of enforced comments in general. I don't even know if she's a Java Developer.

I see this kind of commenting every day, from experienced developers, too. There are now tools that run automatically (like during the nightly build) and rise red flags if a Java method doesn't have comments, so people write those stupid comments to shut up the tool. I have also seen the "get the value" comments in enterprise level open source projects. It is the way developers kill time these days.
The people still running IE6 are likely the same users that happily install any piece of spyware and open executable attachments from untrusted sources. If a couple of high traffic sites stopped supporting IE6 and showed a "click here to install IE7" the IE6 market share would disappear almost overnight.
Since we're all just making assertions about what caused Apple's stock price to go up, I'm not going to argue further on this point.

However, I do disagree with Apple being called the 'Mercedes' of the consumer PC market. If anything, it's the Scion. ;-)
For 3G iPhone, AT&T drops rev-share model with Apple
Phusion Passenger 2.0 RC 1 (aka mod_rails) and Ruby Enterprise Edition released
MacRumors was smart about it. They had JavaScript that would poll for updates once a minute, and a little spinny thing to make the users think it was constantly updating. Far less load than having users refresh the entire page every 5 seconds.
Google's strategy is the same as Microsoft's -- and it certainly hasn't served Microsoft well in this space.
Effectiveness is the ability to get stuff done without screwing up. It doesn't really need to be more complicated than that.
I would say Storytelling Alice, but the scheduled release date for 3.0 is summer of next year. I've used Alice 2.0 and am satisfied with the experience, but the model library lacks if you're doing anything more than a nice neighborhood scene...

I'd go with something that has a large quality graphics/model library. Its good learning how to code, but its even better to feel proud of what you've created, and having an application, movie, or game that looks nice and polished is crucial for that feeling of accomplishment.
That's true, actually I'm more a global thinker than a individual thinker. That's why even if I fail, I should first do no harm and have at least led others to the right direction (in my case, health and ecology).

And this kind of thinking doesn't makes me try to succeed whatever the price. Or in this case, I can even pass over opportunities that would make my personal success more likely but my global influence less positive.
I can say "I will strike rich AND THEN have a positive impact" but the odds are 5 on 1 against me to strike rich so I have to be positive for others even if I personally don't strike rich.

PS: I hate the "this link is expired stuff".
That's what I was thinking. I have a feeling that Ford and GM will need to crumble like British Leyland did, in order for us to start building real cars over here again.
I think it's the title here that PG is alluding to.
Maybe others are blessed with a more favorable browser distribution than I am, but I certainly couldn't afford to drop IE6. About 23% of my site's visitors use it
Sentence after:
"However, it's something that you have to do, to make sure people know that you can (and probably will be) an idiot and naive in some ways."
Y Combinator diaries
I just want to vote this up after the fact. Streaming audio was clear and wonderful. I hope this guy does it again for the next Apple event.
People would take you more seriously if you responded to their emails. Even with a decline
Given Aaron's example, such behavior isn't "fraud" anyone needs to "catch". Using the minimum income to help you work on a startup, no matter how silly or hopeless, is notabug, it's a feature.
Being able to downvote submissions would help.
The mac hardware to develop was a big limitation on large swaths of capable programmers. Recently two things, the iPhone SDK and Unity3D engine are Mac development environment only which really hurts. Do I need to get a mac just to develop for mac? I knew this was coming.
“30 lucky people that get to travel the world for one year”
Strangely, no presidential candidate has mentioned such a sensible proposal.

My candidate (Mike Gravel) did: http://www.gravel2008.us/issues
When you're building a product for customers, the last thing you should be concerned about is saving developer time if it means your less savvy customer base is giving you enough money to make that time worth it.

Unless your strategy is to release a product that can convince less-savvy customers to join the ranks of the savvy... perhaps by junking their creaky old Windows software and upgrading to something nicer and more modern. Like, say, one of those shiny Macs at the Apple Store.

You're right, this kind of nonlinear thinking is not a rational strategy for most of us individual website developers. It's only a rational strategy if you've got enormous chutzpah and the ability to create and sell products that warp the market rather than merely adapt to it.

The reality distortion field is stronger here than I thought.

God, I hope so.

Yes, it's hyperbole to call this move by Apple "visionary" -- just as it's kind of hyperbolic to claim that shaving ten seconds off the Mac's boot time is a matter of life and death. So be it. I will gleefully countenance any amount of reality distortion, social engineering, and breathless handwaving in the name of reducing the browser share of IE6 as quickly as possible. I'm sure many of my fellow CSS designers agree with me.

So let the word go forth: Only squares, and people who still use words like "squares", use IE6. Your friends are secretly laughing at your IE6. IE6 is responsible for most of the evil in the world today. Steve Jobs hates IE6. DHH hates IE6. The Pope hates IE6. According to generally reliable Internet sources [1], Bruce Schneier, Chuck Norris, and Paul Graham disdain IE6. Everytime you launch IE6, God kills a kitten.

[1] i.e., me, but only when I'm not being intentionally hyperbolic. ;)
Try Luminotes? It's not exactly an "enterprise wiki", but it certainly tries to avoid features that get in the way.

http://luminotes.com/
Sleep: A Necessity, Not a Luxury
Writing Style for Print vs. Web
Living in NM, the rural areas are really poor (Income ~25% less than urban), mostly agriculture (big trucks), and long distances to travel to get to gas stations. Combine that with all the young kids moving away (free lottery scholarships) and a higher than normal percentage of people on fixed income, and I'm only surprised the gas doesn't eat up more of their income.
mod_rails (Phusion Passenger) RC adds Phython WSGI support
Graphs as Art
Typical clock rates at that time would have been 5MHz. So let's say you have a 64KB document containing 16K words. For a merge sort that's 2^18 comparisons, each requiring a small number of CPU instructions, so it would take on the order of a quarter of a second. That's better than MS Word running on a modern system :-). Besides, no matter what you do, the bottleneck is going to be reading the dictionary off the floppy.
Go Kart runs on air
The more accurate comparison is the present-value of the series of cash flows. Assuming a 5% annual risk-free rate (that's actually high), the old iPhone is still cheaper:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pBCygk5WFZ3xS06GS2OSf...