skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article is terrific in its sweeping generalizations. The only thing that kept me engaged to the end was the writing. Nicely done. However, I think you over simplified the issue. I lived in NYC, Jerusalem, Vancouver, Montreal, LA, San Fran. Yes, each city has its unique vibe but that does not mean other elements don't exist. You just have to find them. I live in Vancouver now. One may say that it is similar to Berkley in that the fundamental message is to live a better life. However, underneath that, there is art, greed, style, hipness etc. So yes, a city may have a theme but it is only that. Dig a little deeper and ye shall find what ye are seeking no matter the city.
I'm in a similar position to you. Since going solo I've missed working with other people and have found that I'm learning new skills slower without regular code reviews, pair programming, etc. Here are some solutions I've been looking at:

1) Join a small company, such as a startup or web dev studio. The small size will ensure you have a chance to have a varied role and to do lots of different things.

2) Team up with other local developers to form a cooperative or studio of your own.
http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182746 - Why You Must Be in Silicon Valley

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174298 - Ask YC: Where to startup? (If not the US, then Canada or UK?)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116600 - Why Seattle might be a better place to start a company than Silicon Valley
1968: demo of mouse, cutting, copying, pasting, video conferencing, email, and hypertext
Investors in Silicon Valley don't require or necessarily want business plans... try that on the East Coast.
See also http://www.laterloop.com/ for something very similar
Neat. I didn't know about this. Is it cool? I'm going to try the beta right now.
Travel is not a thing that you try, say to yourself that you've done it, and be done with it (like coke, say, or S&M). It's more like college; you do it in large part because it will benefit your life from then on. Traveling at the end of life makes about as much sense as going to college at the end of life.
The one that I use to post the current page to del.icio.us with. I've clicked it several thousand times in the past few years.
I hadn't heard the news. SuSE isn't one of the distros that I usually follow. The news didn't pop up in any of my RSS feeds :\

Plus what SuSE has goes beyond what I envisioned. So props to them.
You're right, The competition is definitely stiff - aside from craig, there's ls9, amyris, sapphire and a dozen other solid companies. On the upside, the market is very big, and the problem is certainly worth solving.
i'm a little biased, but check out http://shifd.com/tools
similar to instapaper, delicious, etc in that you can bookmark links, but you can also do plain text (notes, addresses, recipes, etc). one use i like - you can highlight addresses on a page and click the bookmarklet which will save to shifd.com...then you can access the address+map on your phone.
Don't forget to take a swig of the hatorade first.
for commonlisp, see lispbox link below.

for Scheme, use Dr Scheme:
http://www.drscheme.org/
Wow is that site ugly. Hopefully in return for free access to the content, someone gives them free access to a graphic designer.
Expect new drugs to treat aging, researchers say
Drupal needs work too.

http://buytaert.net/drupal-usability-testing

It went through a usability test and surprise, surprise, the whole Drupal nomenclature is actually off-putting for the average Joe.

Usability is difficult. Very difficult. We'll see the fruits in Drupal 7/8. As a programmer/hacker/ia/ui guy -- I find all fascinating.

The general trend I think is UI is beginning to come of age.
Start-up Job Opportunities
LOOKING FOR A GREAT START-UP OPPORTUNITY?

One of Canaan Partner's hot portfolio start-up is currently recruiting for top notch engineers (SW Engineers, Test Engineers, SW Data Engineers and Graphic Web Designers) to join our exceptionally talented company. If you want to work with talented and experienced professionals on the toughest engineering problems and if you thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment that is filled with the challenges and learning opportunities inherent in working with innovative technologies and ready to turn an established industry upside down, Zoosk is the place for you. This is truly a ground floor opportunity for the right person.

Zoosk is located in downtown San Francisco and provides a very competitive compensation package, including pre-IPO stock options, Sweet Sexy iMacs, Monthly Wellness/Gym Reimbursement and more! We are funded by one of Silicon Valley's pre-eminent venture capital firms – Canaan Partners.

To learn more about the opportunities at Zoosk please email me your resume and your availability to discuss these opportunities.

Contact:
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Zoosk Talent Acquisition Strategist
E: jobs@zoosk.com or christy.weinstein@gmail.com
Cell: 650 714-1379
eBay is still much more than an auctioning service. It's a lightweight platform for anyone-- store owner or housewife-- to sell absolutely anything. The structure itself is fine, it's the community that's been poisoned. eBay needs stricter enforcements on its weaknesses: sniping, shipping costs, and PAYPAL. eBay needs to cut Paypal off with a sword and start clean. Call it something else because I will never trust that name. Never in my life has transacting money been more difficult and dangerous. The interface, the communication with the staff, and the rats that use it.
Our startup, www.Arkalumen.com, aims to bring the benefits of full-spectrum solid-state lighting to everyone. My technical co-founder has developed proprietary technology as good as the best on the market (microcontroller programming, integrated circuit layout, heatsink, and a unique wireless user-interface) which we are now in the process of commercializing.

Our technology is most certainly not a web app! (note: My background is very web2.0 - Director of Product Management for a venture-backed niche social-network and community site, among other things)

Honestly, I find it somewhat refreshing to be working wth real customers to develop tangible products again.

We are in the process of taking our prototype from the spare bedroom to the spotlight and are currently working on our frst web site. Expect to hear more from us soon.
Read your user agreement. Any kind of server is typically forbidden for non-business lines, regardless of the bandwidth.

For what it's worth, I haven't had a moment's trouble with verizon, despite being firmly among the top 1 percent of users.
and on news.yc;) thanks J!
OLAP app
Hi. I was wondering if there are any good OLAP application online that uses MySQL as the database.
Closest it gets:

"10. Script. Everyone should be able to throw a script together to get quick results. That doesn't mean you're a programmer. Real programmers put in error messages, look for abnormal behavior, and document. You don't need to do that, but you should be able to put something together to remove lines, send e-mail, or copy files."

Wow, that's setting the bar pretty low. Whatever an IT Guy is, I don't think I'd want one who told me "Oh, I only script, I don't program"
New hints seen that red wine may slow aging
http://newsconomy.com/
The USA definitely needs to make it easier for sharp foreign-born people to immigrate and work here. The public school system needs to be overhauled to provide better science and engineering education. However, these have been valid arguments for years - even before the 9/11 attacks and the rise of R&D in China and India.

I always wonder when the Economist leaves out basic economics. The locations in the USA where engineering, R&D and startup innovation are concentrated are also the most expensive places to live.

25 years ago, a research scientist or engineer could make $60K and buy a house in Livermore for $120K. Now, that same house is $1.2M but the salary for a research scientist is still $60K. The immigrant researchers and engineers who originally populated silicon valley now encourage their children to be doctors, lawyers, or increasingly to go into finance (Economics is now #1 major for Smart People).

This can be fixed one of two ways: pay engineers and researchers more, or build R&D centers in less expensive areas. Corporations are choosing the second option. Unfortunately (for americans), the less expensive areas they are moving R&D are located overseas.
Minor nitpick: it's not true that "a body will emit exactly as much as it absorbs" in general. That's only true once it reaches some equilibrium temperature, which may not be room temperature. If you stick a room-temperature metal sheet outside on a sunny day, it will heat up until it reaches a steady state where the rate of heat absorption is equal to the rate of heat dissipation -- this can be significantly higher than room temperature, which is why pieces of metal outside on a hot day are really really hot.
Autopartswarehouse.com
The Autopartswarehouse.com tells the latest news concerning to car makes, and models. Also, give you tips with regards to vehicles.
What sucks about [site:wikipedia.org YOUR QUERY]?
You do web dev, you could also consider getting into a JS library.

And I recommend everyone who works in a team read http://producingoss.com/ -- its insights aren't just good for open source code.
I wasn't asking why macros were useful in general, but thanks anyway.
If you solve it, do you think you'll get and accept an offer you can't refuse from the oil companies? Craig Venter seems to have already taken an offer that he couldn't refuse from said companies.

Do you think anyone in the field is brave enough to go around the oil companies or is their distribution infrastructure too much to ignore?
We're designing/building/marketing wellness tech products to consumers.. opening a retail shop this fall, web store, then expand nationally. Designing & mfg'ing some of our own and OEM'ing the rest. We've hit (nearly) every product roadblock you can think of, too. Now battling with electrical certification (much more stringent north of the border) and steeply rising shipping costs from asia. I personally spent almost a year in China starting a product dev engineering office & chasing dead-end manufacturer leads (now we're mfg'ing in Canada) culminating in a massive burnout (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69097) but after some R&R and soul-searching, have been able to re-join the fray.
:)
I use it a lot, for internal stuff only. But it's very useful for me. Is there any better alternative? (jottit is king in being simple and fast)
Make Your Own DIY Multitouch Pad (vid)
56 kbps = 7 kilobytes / second
There's been a number of job postings today. Would you guys approve if I started up a "YC Jobs" site?
The Art of Speed in Startups
Amazon + McDonalds = Worst Cross Marketing Ever
Obama: I will be the Democratic nominee
To be honest, that's one of the worst job postings I've read. Cut out every instance of "great", "top-notch", "exceptional", "talented", "dynamic", "experienced", "professional", fast-paced", "innovative", "challenging" ... and replace them with something about your company and why a potential employee should care.

There's a great section in Freakanomics about how such words tend to map to houses on the real estate market. ;-)
http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

(edit: I know it doesn't list every job, but there are not really enough non-YC jobs posted to make an entirely different site work, from what I've seen)
The problem is how to quantify "smartness" in American immigration legal system.

For most young hackers like the ones in YC, the green card process becomes almost impossible for them because for new bachelor degree holders from a school outside U.S. without any significant working experience, they will be lumped as EB3 if they need a employer and 3 to 4 years in a queue and they need to work to make sure the employer won't go belly up during the process. Otherwise they have to walk a path like Auctomatic founders did to get E-1 or E-2 and they need some capital first to apply for E-1 or E-2 visas. If they apply for H-1B, they can not be the owners of their own company.

Current immigration system stresses heavily on academic achievements. But does a guy who finishes Ph.D. or master degree a good hacker? Not necessary. Is he/she a good innovators in product design or technology? Not necessary. Unfortunately, what U.S.A needs is potential stars like Robert Tappan Morris. But in current system, if RTM was convicted of a crime outside U.S., he will be denied of petition. (But I may be wrong because DVD Jon is in U.S. now)

If a smart kids can create a Google like company in Europe or China, it won't be his/her interest to immigrate to U.S. to pay big taxes here in coming years for social security deficiency and cost of Iraq war, right? But the current system puts too much stress on past achievements as a proof for "smartness". That may work before when pace of competition is not so fast as 1986, but it starts to be incompatible with current software/internet industry.

When green card process takes 4 to 5 years to finish, then only existing big companies can be reliable sponsors. while the real wealth creators are start ups and they are unable to get who they need. When a start up sponsors green card, immigration authority requires tax record (so the company has to exist for at least 1 calendar year), had some news paper reviews for product and blah blah blah so on. The authority will ask "what is techcrunch? the company is on techcrunch but did the company hit WSJ, USA today or NYT? Is this company a real company and not a sham? Oh, the company loses money, how do you guy can run this company for another 5 years to pay for this guy on petition?" Well, if we know the company will be in next 5 years, then it is not a start up just in Angel stage. It is already a serial A/B company.

I think the current system may be fixable, but if congress can not even figure out what went wrong (And believe me, I think they are clueness because they may never heard of YC :-) ) How can they fix the problem?
"if you'd like to live someplace less crappy/expensive, that might be Seattle"

Heh. That's funny...if I could give my 22-year-old self a piece of valuable advice, it would be to stay the hell out of Seattle.

(It's June 3, 55 degrees and raining. Fun stuff. Y'all come.)
It's like the dentist who hands out free snickers bars
40GB/month = 15KB/s. Put that all together and you'll see his error.
Presenting Twitter
You could try Pentaho, they are RDBMS-agnostic: http://pentaho.org. I've evaluated them in the past and though I've never used them, they seem good for certain types of OLAP.
Watch out for large operating system updates, large application updates, email sending zombies and open wireless networking connections.
While this is awesome, this is covered on the TV News, so it does fall within what the rules consider off-topic. But threads like this have come up rarely enough (one previous Obama thread?), that the rules can be broken.

Go Obama.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Though I guess Obama is kind of an interesting new phenomenon, but probably not new to anyone here.
News? Sure.

Hacker News? Not so much.
This possibility has already been discussed on this forum. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183541
Make sure you back it up!
WTF is a "Graphic Web Designers"?

I don't even apply at places that can't come up with a real job title.

Are you looking for a Graphic Artist, Web Designer, or Designer? Or, more likely, something like a UI Designer or even UX/IA Engineer?
A co-worker, who worked with COBOL years ago, keeps getting phone calls offering him COBOL jobs. Very highly paying COBOL jobs. He laughs at them.

In other words, a dead programming language doesn't mean that there's no demand for it anymore. What it means is that good programmers won't touch it with a stick.

So indeed, java developers shouldn't worry - they'll have plenty of jobs well into the future - the platform is just too prevalent, and especially in financial institutions that only recently moved over from java to COBOL, and will take another 30 years to make the next move. On the other hand, if you like programming and it's more than just a way to make a living, then java isn't where you want to be.
Yeah...however, the outcome of the presidential election would deserve to be on the front page.
Well, if we need to tweak it for more relevancy, I'd be interested to hear any strong public speakers pick apart what makes him such a good speaker.
I was about to say, word for word, the exact same thing. Had it typed out and everything. Then I had to check on dinner, came back, and got the unknown/expired link error.

Needles to say, I'm in agreement.
Agreed... but I don't make the rules. Do your worst, editors.
My point exaactly. How long has Microsoft been trying to corner the mobile OS market? Even with an entrenched desktop monopoly and control of pretty much every corporate mail server ever, the best they could do was 12%? Both the iPhone and Android are individually more exciting than anything Microsoft has done in mobile in the last 5 years. In combination, they are a perfect storm. Windows Mobile is dead.

(The iPhone release this month includes support for Exchange Server. Expect their numbers vis-à-vis Windows Mobile to skyrocket.)
you are a bit harsh but in any way, i am trying to show a different side of learning - one in which you don't need 100% accuracy. If 5% of the information of the information is wrong and it still does the job, what is the point of sweating the lack of perfection? glad to hear opinion though
Ask YC: Do I still need web hosting if I am using Google Engine?
If I already have my own domain, using Google Applications, Google Sites, and Google Engine. Do I still need web hosting to deploy my web based application? Any insights? Thanks.
54 in San Francisco. That's why everyone says the city's cool.
How is this not dead? Politics should not be the top story - I thought there was a strict ban on politics?
But this isn't the outcome of a presidential election. And anyways, why should the outcome of the presidential election be on HN? Its not especially relevant to hackers, and I'm quite certain people will see the news elsewhere - it usually gets a lot of coverage.
Doesn't say who runs it. If it's run by the gov't it'll probably be incredibly risk averse and not invest in anything particularly innovative.
wow... lot of anger both ways.

All I know is a as a designer at a startup I almost never use photoshop. I use a pen and then I do mockups in HTML, CSS, and javascript. It's definitely the fastest way for web applications.
SnapCasa: Instant and Free Web Site Screenshots
Rules To Follow When Cell Phones Drop Coverage
The Real Power of Personal Branding
Adify exec: Social networks eating away at CPM value
Constant Vigilance: RivalMap Introduces Automatic News Updates
CBS And Yahoo To Announce Partnership Tomorrow Morning
Cut out every instance of "great", "top-notch", "exceptional", "talented", "dynamic", "experienced", "professional", fast-paced", "innovative", "challenging" ... and replace them with something about your company and why a potential employee should care.

Or we could just strip out the buzzwords and buzzphrases:

--------

LOOKING FOR A START-UP JOB?

A start-up funded by Canaan Partners wants to hire engineers (SW Engineers, Test Engineers, SW Data Engineers and Graphic Web Designers). If you want to work at a start-up, Zoosk is the place for you. Zoosk is a start-up.

Zoosk is located in downtown San Francisco and provides money, stock options, and toys. We are funded by Canaan Partners.

To learn more about the opportunities at Zoosk please email me your resume and your availability.

Contact: Christy Weinstein Zoosk Talent Acquisition Strategist E: jobs@zoosk.com or christy.weinstein@gmail.com Cell: 650 714-1379
I started using the filesystem for storage a while back, and then realized that I'm re-implementing a lot of DBMS functionality in my own buggy code. I switched over to using a database.

I'm just saying that you should consider all of your requirements first, figure out how much code you're going to need that just manages your data, and then decide whether a database is really such a bad idea.
I think his comments are aimed at developers who do a lot of design, not designers who do some development.

For a developer, making a HTML/CSS mockup is the same kind of pretending that you're talking about. They think in HTML/CSS terms natively. It requires extra thought for them to do a mock-up in Photoshop.
how l33t of him.
Website Optimizer Contest
Sounds like the beginnings of a Seinfeld episode.

Who ARE these people that Double-call The Callback?
No strict ban, just caution - the reason given as politics tending to be divisive, even among intelligent groups.
No. That will be on every news source.
My god, this whole comment thread is people wondering out loud if "this is hacker news" or not. Give it a rest. No it's not hacker news, and no it doesn't matter. If you're really concerned with the purity of a website, you're going to have to find out who upmodded the thing and then ban them.

As I said a long time ago: The democrats have one chance to lose this election, and that is to nominate Barack Obama. Oddly, given that McCain is basically a moderate democrat himself, a loss by Obama would probably tend to neuter the GOP and result in an overall advantage for the leftist program.
Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.
The prediction markets like Obama. http://www.intrade.com

McCain has been around for a long time and has said a lot of contradictory things -- it is easy to edit videos together to make him look like a fool. A flip-flopper, if you will.
That depends on the specifics of the application and the traffic it receives. Perhaps you can tell us more about the application?

There are a subset of applications that App Engine is perfectly suited for at this specific point in time, but it is tough to give you an answer without more information.
Appears to be tightly bound to Rails.
One point to bring it on topic: Obama has by far the best use of the Internet any candidate has ever had. From fundraising to volunteer recruitment to local organization to event coordination, he blows the competition away.
I think the goal is to create a new source of renewable energy. I think the right oil company could be part of the process...all that said, 'if you solve it' is a pretty big if :)
Their specs sound a lot like Ycombinator's.
The 6 Markets You Need to Know Now
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” --Wayne Gretzky
I think it is relevant to hackers. It might not be hacker-specific, but it significantly affects all kinds of things, many IP related.
The man has his own social network to recruit volunteers.
Basically it is similar to a simple accounting system. Thanks.
If anyone wants to read his tech policy, here it is. This election is a battle for net neutrality.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

The education policy is also good, it basically comes down to "spend more money on education."

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/
The people who engage in it don't call it theft or piracy. At least not any of the ones I know.
This sucks for the Democratic campaign in '08 - Obama/AP/CNN says he will be nominee, Hillary campaign says they are mistaken, Democratic party can't say much until the convention. Doesn't seem like much of a time of unity... hopefully, we'll all come together by November.
RailsConf 2008 Lightning Talk Roundup: 36 Talks in 3 Days
Including such subjects as git and lighthouse integration, projects for managing everything from ec2 deployment to the arduino microcontroller, and the usual Zenspider rant.