skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wrote this four months ago in an email to a friend of mine:

"San Francisco is definitely a great area, and you should at least visit some day. There's a vibe there that's completely different from anywhere else I've ever been. It is hard to explain. You just go there and you feel it. Things seem possible out there that would be laughed at here. That's the best way I can put it.

Every city that I've been to has a certain feel to it. New York is rude and busy. Portland is relaxed and thoughtful. San Francisco is ambitious and free-spirited. Atlanta is comfortable and complacent. Atlanta's feel was good for growing up, and it is one that's good for growing old if you're willing to play it conservatively and live a life of moderate wealth and complacency. But if you're not, you should go to a city that has a better feel for what your goals are at that stage in your life.

Does that make sense? I'm by no means trying to convince you to go to San Francisco, but for me it was important that I travelled around and discovered the city that had the right feel for me. Portland was very close, and San Francisco is nearly spot on. I have no doubt you'll be somewhat different. Give it a try though, eh?"

Its like PG read my email and decided to write an essay on it.
> you should be more powerful.

The subsequent "effect you have on the world" is a far better description of the bay area than "power". I think that in terms of actual "power", as in Washington DC power, the bay area is underrepresented for the amount of money there.
If you have no beta testers currently, I think it's unadvisable to open it up fully. Have a closed beta, get 50-100 people in there and get some feedback ASAP. Fix outstanding issues and then think about launching openly.
I hike in the mountains regularly (with a 50 pound pack) and spend 6-8 hours a week in the dojo. :)
New York is made of a dozen little subsections. I see no reason why a concentrated startup community could not form there, much as artist and theatre communities have thrived.
I've just noticed that there are two "impedance mismatches" in a lot of applications.

UI -> Domain Model -> Persistence

Most people know of the 2nd one. The 1st one is just as big an impedance mismatch!

Most of the ways of doing UIs are not OO. If UIs were OO in a given environment, then naive developers following the path of least resistance starting from the GUI "hello world" would naturally build an OO application.

Are there any environments like that? Is Rails one such environment?
Money and power are interchangeable, and that's what most ambitious people want. Of course, there are other benefits, like the joy of seeing something work, and the satisfaction of making a difference in the world. So most polite people will play up those benefits over the money/power angle.

Fame, hipness, insider knowledge? All either means to an end or cultural by-products. LA is run on power and money - studio execs are the most powerful, and basically run the entertainment biz, but they generally stay out of the limelight. DC runs on political power, plain and simple. Hipness is a by-product of having a very large concentration of young, single people in one place. You'll find brands of hip in every major city.

Ideas as Cambridge's main "industry" is also somewhat of a dubious distinction. Ideas are cheap. Talented people (i.e., the execution of ideas) is the bottleneck.
I've realized now why I always liked living in Los Angeles so much (apart from my family being nearby): 'Los Angeles' was really 'Pasadena', and 'Pasadena' was 'Caltech'. Living in Pasadena near Caltech was like living in Cambridge, only the weather was good and most of the books on people's bookshelves required calculus to understand them fully. (I've also lived in Cambridge, and while I loved all the high-IQ neighbors, there's also a lot of pseudo-intellectual pretension there. Not all books need mathematics, of course, but math is a convenient pin for pricking inflated egos.)
Duuude, Mister Graham, I've never even heard of this Cambridge, and I seriously doubt it is the intellectual capital of the world. And you know what - you are not qualified to judge. You've not been to Urumuqi, Jenin, Port Harcourt or Bahia, how can you make a judgement based on having been in two cities?

And furthermore, I take offense at the suggestion that American universities produce the best students. In general, the American engineers I have met have been less skilled than their German counterparts.

American universities produce people with ambition, but that probably has to do more with the American culture than any particular school policy.

Cities do not mould people. People of a certain sort hear about the reputation of a city and they flock there. It's like people hear of china town and go there for chinese food, and pretty soon lots of people are selling chinese food there, because it is where people go for chinese food.

A city influences people, but in a very complex manner. It's an animal ecosystem, and there are hundreds of factors at work that modify and regulate pull and push of a city.

You are seeing cambridge from your peculiar focus. That's not the real cambridge. Imagine some black bum you drive by, imagine how he sees cambridge. For him its not a place of ideas. There is no push towards reading.

What you term the 'city' is the social circle you are in. That's not the city, the city is much more diverse than that. There are crackheads and hos, bums and pimps, bus drivers and lower class korean immigrants. Its not an idea place for those people, it's just home.

A city can gain a reputation, and this reputation can cause a crust of a certain type of person to form in the city, but beneath this layer, every city is made up of normal people.

Sooner or later, the trend will change and the flavour of the crust will change, but beneath it all, life and death of these normal people will continue.

You are mistaking the icing for the cake.
Have you been to Austin? I am very interested in going there and would like your take on it.
Money and power are interchangeable

Nearly, but not quite. For example, Linus Torvalds isn't rich by New York or Silicon Valley standards, but he's quite powerful nevertheless. And Barack Obama isn't particularly rich either, but he's on the brink of being perhaps the most powerful man in the world.
One thing that seems missing is the notion of cities within cities. Los Angeles and Silicon Valley (which I'm familiar with) cannot be treated as monoliths. Instead you have districts in which one subculture dominates others.

In Orange County you may have areas that are dominated by unemployed housewives with lots of money. But you may have areas around a University that have a completely different flavor. Comparing Westwood (UCLA) to Boyle Heights (Ghetto) is a pretty stark contrast.

But I understand your meaning - similar to what Richard Florida and others are saying about self selecting societies.

At least people like me who live in the middle west can a) put themselves near an academic setting and b) can feed as much off of digital connectedness as possible to offset the effect.
The market value of ideas is low, but the ideas are still expensive to make. Their existence is a good indicator.
Task API (3 of 5) - Monitoring HTTP POST operations
No, I think that 25% of the pledged tips are actually paid.
the technology exists, it's been done, the oil lobby will not allow this to happen, too many rich people (Hi George W. Bush and family) would lose their fortunes...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
There is definitely a startup scene in NYC. Lot's of groups such as http://wiki.workatjelly.com/. However, there are far fewer tech startups here than in CA. Most of the people I know work on Wall Street, advertising, real estate, law, non-profits/education or something closely related. Back in Palo Alto, I could walk into my synagogue and point to different people who've taken their companies public, in startups or worked for big tech firms. Most NYer's don't even realize SF and LA are almost as far apart as a round trip to Cambridge. Different worlds the two cities.
Most UI code is intrinsically event-based. e.g., "on click, do this", "on resize, do that"

Erlang comes to mind as a good event-based language. Strangely, it is rarely (if ever) used for UI.
I think Paul's right here, but there is one point that always irks me when he's talking about location: It comes off as assuming that the singular goal of your life is to start a successful startup and that having a successful startup makes you a great person.

While we're throwing out city memes, here's what I'd peg my beloved Berlin: Break the rules.
He and his wife did get much richer as he got more powerful, though. (http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/09/hospital_offici...). ""She's terrific," added Michael Riordan, who was president of the hospital in March 2005, when Michelle Obama was promoted to vice president for external affairs and had her annual salary increased from $121,910 to $316,962." Hot damn! Did she get two and a half times as effective at "external affairs" over that year?
That link doesn't work for me, here's another link to the same article: http://www.dailynews.com/technology/ci_9301295
"New York is rude and busy."

New York is just busy -- if you are as busy as everyone else, wasting time with "Please" and "Thank you" would strike you as rude.
Cities also tell you about the lifestyle (and speed) - new york is all about speed, people dont have time. while i noticed that atlanta is laid back. also each city might have multiple message depending which pocket you are - for example if you are on a broadway in new york then you will definitely have different feeling, if you are in hollywood then along with fame you will feel hypocrisy (may be) and creativity. big cities always have multiple message with different kind of ambitions.

I have also noticed that one kind of person will normally go for the city that suit his/her personality (due to experience and the way they have been brought up), for example a person brought-up in new-york will most possibly won't like atlanta and vice-versa. the reason being NY guy is used to speed, he just cant take anything slower, if the train is scheduled at 7.13am then he has to be on platform on time, while a guy in atlanta will get anxiety if he goes to NY and have to rush his life with everyone else.

City with laid back attitude also tells you that people over there dont care for money but that doesn't mean people dont make enough money (in fact they enjoy money at the fullest), on the other side people from the city of speedy lifestyle always feel like they dont have enough money even though they make good money, this is partly due to the cost of living and the culture where everyone wants to make more money.

Also people from laid back city are not in-secured the way people are from busy places like NY, London, Bombay, Tokyo etc. People from laid back city dont worry about what will happen tomorrow, but people from city like NY and Bombay are constantly worrying about tomorrow, it drives them crazy if they are not planning their life/career in advance.
I think the biggest shift in deciding where to live is happening "online" rather than "offline". I am an online nomad.

I never lived and never will live in MySpace. I do not like the MySpacians message (Hey lets try to see who has more friends and hookups).

I sometimes spend time at Facebook. I lived there for a little while until I realized I am not so much into keeping in touch and I had no friends in the few hours I spent in college. When they open their borders, that's when I found that I do not like the Facebookies message (You should throw more pies and send more kisses)

I vacationed at Twitter, but it is not really my cup of tea. I still dont get their message (Life is a popularity contest).

So Where do I live? Well, I live mostly in HN. Although I sometimes get into arguments with the habitants, I have yet to find another city that beats the intelligence, vibe, energy and support I witness here. I take a daily ride to Techcrunch City and NYT, but I make sure I come back home to HN and mingle with the people who live here.
Nope. I keep meaning to attend an SXSW, but can never find the time/money.
I guess this is why Rob Pike can spend 6 months writing a concurrency-friendly language like Newsqueak, then use it to write a GUI windowing system in a coupe of hours.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=810232012617965344
Their existence is a precondition for effecting positive change, but there still must be an "industrial base" to implement them. It turns out that ideas are cheaper than talent, but since the Bay Area has a greater concentration of talent, they dominate in the implementation of ideas.

If the Boston area wants to get ahead in startups, it's going to need to attract more talent than SF. Sadly, I've seen plenty of MIT grads head to Google and Facebook...and some of those kids are going to be starting the next wave of companies...
Is anyone using scalr?
How is it working out for you? Please share your experiences and any problems you faced in using it?
Thanks.
"A friend who moved to Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping."

I can totally relate to that, as an acquaintance of mine from Boston and I echoed very similar sentiments about where I live (Atlanta). There are some great universities and brilliant people here, but you really have to actively seek them out. I'm still amazed how drastically the average quality of my interactions with people dropped when I first moved off campus. It seems to be almost a win or lose situation in regards to motivation: seeing other people involved in their projects, even if they are not in the same field, helps me to stay focused, but if I find myself surrounded by vapid conversation all day long, it actually has a negative effect.
I agree that the ideas themselves are not worth much. What I meant was this: being able to run 26 miles on foot is not especially useful, but the kind of people determined enough to do that are also the kind of people determined enough to succeed in other ventures.
"Oxford and Cambridge (England) feel like Ithaca or Hanover: the message is there, but not as strong."

There seems to be a lot of ambition in Ithaca, but the focus is on the collective rather than the individual. The messages that Ithaca sends are "make the community a better place, help the less fortunate, buy local food from the farmers market and co-ops, support local artists and musicians, attend community festivals and events, bond with your neighbors, and support the local schools and public transportation. Also, distrust authority."

This is reflected by the fact that the two most popular bumper stickers are Coexist (spelled out of religious symbols) and "Ithaca, NY: Ten square miles surrounded by reality."[1] And despite the fact that if you drive ten miles in any direction (except along the lake) you'll run into people living in trailer parks, the town itself is actually a surprisingly nice place to live.

The town support individuality, but only to the extent that your individuality helps bring out the individuality in others. The message seems to be that you can start a startup and we'll support your efforts to become successful, but not so successful that you drown out the voice of the rest of us.

[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Coexist-bumpersticke...
Somewhere in between the raving Al Gores of the world and the equally raving "No, global warming is totally impossible!" folks is a sparsely-populated region of sensible opinion. It seems like Freeman Dyson is somewhere in this region, but very few others are -- at least, very few voices who can actually get heard in the media.

The basic problem is this: it's pretty clear that if we add extra CO2 to the atmosphere, the planet will get warmer. And it's also clear that if the planet gets warmer, then there will be bad effects. Thus we really should be able to come up with some sort of dollars-per-ton value (let's call it K) for exactly how much harm is caused by CO2 emissions and work from there, perhaps applying some sort of tax to properly take into account the externalities of CO2 emissions.

The problem is that sensible estimates for the value of K vary by many orders of magnitude, and values which are not sensible but are nonetheless widely implicitly accepted vary by an additional bunch of orders of magnitude on either end. First, we have the uncertainty of exactly how much CO2 causes exactly how much warming. Secondly, we have the uncertainty of how much warming causes how much harm -- again, several orders of magnitude in the sensible estimates.

And that's without getting into the additional problems of expressing total worldwide harm in dollars (if we make Siberia into great farmland but drown Tonga is that a net loss or a net gain?) which I'm not gonna even talk about.

Now, if we could all accept that there's a genuine question to be answered about how big K is, and that there are still enormous error bars involved in determining this quantity, then we might be able to get down to having the sensible and important discussion which we as a species really need to be having at this point in history.

Unfortunately, the majority of the voices we hear nowadays are coming from the extremes -- either the Al Gores and Ted Turners of the world who want us to believe that K is huge, or the folks who want us to believe that K is zero. (Actually I'm not sure that the K = 0 folks really exist in large numbers, but they're a convenient strawman for those who believe K is huge.)

I don't know what the solution is, but as usual it would help if the media would hire a few more people who actually had some clue about the way science works.
Great info. Thanks a lot.
Obama is not the most powerful man in the world. If he is elected, he may be, but he won't be able to turn that power into money, thank god.

Ex-presidents make a boatload of money, though. Books, speaking engagements, etc. That's a direct result of their power.
PG fails to mention that Cambridge (and Sommerville, the emerging hipster/cheaper alternative) is like an island in the middle of a puritan city.

Boston, in large, give the message of "old money rules". Where you were born, where is your summer house (Martha Vineyard, Cape Cod, or Maine?), seems to the most important thing.
And coorporates rule, so you have to play by their game: meaning you have to be one of them, in the boys club, have some gray hair, be decent at golf (or pretend to like it), in order to be considered good at busniness.

Boston/Cambridge is great if you are in academia, or doing research, but doing anything practical, or startup it is not that place to be.

Young ambitious people move somewhere else, the rest is stuck in academia, or living the 9-5 life clinging to the coorporate life, maybe they will manage up in the ladder (or rat race).

Adding, I also have met very smart people in Cambridge, but talk is cheap, and there is a lot of it in there. Everybody has an opinion about everything, but when it comes to action, there isn't much.
Yes, bits of this came from that experiment in blogging I tried with Infogami. I thought of mentioning that in one of those prefatory remarks, but mentioning it would have taken more words than the bits in question.
I think carbon-eating trees are only part of the solution. We already have carbon-eating trees; all that coal and oil didn't just come from dinosaurs. The problem is that the output of trees is so useful, we don't have to willpower to cut them down (or even just rake up all the leaves each fall), store them in a cave somewhere, and forget about them.

We really need the carbon in a form that doesn't decompose and is more useful than wood. Diamond would be great...
I don't think that sounds like "ambition" at all.
I realize that trucks, and industrial machinery will still be necessary, but I can't imagine that the car avalanche is necessary that is polluting our cities every day.

I am sorry, but most people could easily switch to public transport or cycling for their daily commute, and they would be healthier for it. That goes for European cities anyway - maybe in the US you are out of luck without a car.

Also, where I live there is a tax reduction for living outside of the city. Obviously that has to go away. If you decide to live outside the city, why shouldn't you have to pay for it.

Please list who am I hurting with my stance on cars, I would honestly be interested and would like to take it into consideration.
Closed releases seem to give you 2 chances at publicity (closed release, open release) to at least an immediate circle, which can't hurt
It's ok to riff on themes. Bach did it all the time.
Not everyone is just busy. The place turns some people into monsters.
Business and Beer, Founders meetup Berlin (Wednesday)
Maybe because they are actively hurting my health and polluting my environment every day?
I'm only 20% collectivist, the rest is ideal Austrian economics.
Austin tells you 'you should be weird'.
I'm just waiting for the Ron Paul posts now, and the transition will be complete...
I don't object! It was just interesting to see the gap between an early draft and a finished copy.
I actually remember John C from the days when he wrote for PC Magazine (I am only four years younger than him). I enjoyed his writing and I even enjoy him as a guest host on TWIT. I would argue that Dvorak is quite different from Scoble. John reads a lot, knows a few things in depth and has original thoughts of his own.
"Hipness is another thing you wouldn't have seen on the list 100 years ago. Or wouldn't you?"

Being picky about the grammar here, but shouldn't it be 'Or would you?' ?
Cycles of stories happen here, this peak oil post was triggered by the higher voted electric car conversion story. It'll be gone in a day.
I've noticed messages as well:

Gary, IN: Lock the doors. Do not stop.

Macon, GA: You know, Atlanta is just up the road, right?

Elko, NV: The only winners are the house and the mine owners.

Milwaukee, WI: Fourth place is just fine, given enough beer.

Clearly, I need to hang out in better cities.
I wish the spirit of Boston were anything so romantic as "old money rules." Actually there are hardly any of those people left. The Thurston Howells have all died, and their trustafarian kids have long since moved to Berkeley or Boulder. Except for Cambridge, Boston doesn't send any message at all that I can pick up.
Or http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?...

Also, I'm surprised that ProTX ( http://www.protx.com/ ) hasn't been mentioned on this forum. Anyhow, whatever you pick, it'll probably be cheaper and more responsive than WorldPay.
It also tells you to have a beer, tube the river, and then join a band.
So just to make this a little more precise, which is your candidate for intellectual capital, Urumuqi, Jenin, Port Harcourt or Bahia?
If you are in biotech, Cambridge is at par with the bay area when it comes to startups. As a life scientist, walking around Kendall square is sheer energy
Slow technology adoption = adoption nonetheless
The values of New York come from Wall Street, which sets the tone for the rest of industry there. The attitude that everything has its price is responsible for the bad reputation that New York and New Yorkers have in the rest of the country.

If you live in New York, in some sense you aren't a citizen of the United States: your residency means that you have a passport to enter the "real" United States.

Another thing about New York: it clearly isn't known for science. The Science Museum in Oakland California would be impossibly out of place in New York. The two main categories of industry in New York are finance and media, broadly conceived (including the arts, television, publishing, fashion, advertising and so on).
Confirmed: Windows 7 preview coming tonight at D6
Everyone wants to go beyond early adoption to mass adoption. As the recent issues with Twitter are demonstrating, building a service (or site or company) that will scale is a challenge all to itself!
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