skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Reminds me of:

We are sponsoring an ongoing Quality Contest. The purpose is to constructively combine two facts of modern life: One, we are all expected to spend our working hours immersed in quality; and two, if you keep your boss immersed in quality, you will be free to finish your work.

We therefore announce a technical essay contest. Each month, or whenever we feel like it, we will have a new contest. This month's challenge: define a technical specification for a database to inventory, manipulate, and analyze large quantities of quality. Entries are limited to a maximum of 100 words.

...from: http://www.byte.com/art/9704/sec16/art1.htm
Living on the UWS and commuting to midtown via riverside park/west side highway doesn't count as a long commute. The only reason it's long is that you choose to bike it rather than take the subway.

Living in central Jersey (or hudson valley or greenwich) and commuting 2 hrs to midtown via car and NJT-- that's more the tradeoff the OP is talking about.

:-P

That said, another choice (may not be valid in some cities) is to split the difference-- live on the edge of cities where housing is more affordable, but commutes are still reasonable (e.g. South Brooklyn, Washington Heights).
I had the exact same problem with no help and no cosigners. Eerily exact actually. My dad wouldn't help or co-sign and his income was too great to help with financial aid, and my mom was in no financial position to co-sign.

So, what did I do? I spent every waking second of my senior year in high school applying for scholarships (merit-based, not need-based). So my advice to you would be to do the same. You may be out of high school already, but it's never too late. Spend the next semester applying for scholarships (sign up and create your profile on fastweb.com for starters).

After you've gotten a few, go take out student loans for the rest. Though a co-signer helps, I never had one, so I know it's possible. I got most of mine through Sallie Mae. Of course the downside is you get approved with an 11% interest rate (especially with the economy the way it is now). But if you're truly as skilled and disciplined as you claim, you should be able to make that back up no problem once you graduate.

Of course, playing devil's advocate here, there are many people for whom college is not right. Many people spend their entire lives paying off student loans because they got a degree in some field that doesn't pay well, and for which the difference in average salaries between a college grad and a high school grad is not enough to feasibly cover the cost of the college degree.

However, with programming, and the level of competence you're claiming, a degree would definitely be a wise investment for you. So, get in the game and take care!
OpenGo - A Go Programming Environment
Silicon Valley should not be any more worried than the rest of the country or world.

Actually, given what people are pointing out here, maybe SV should be less worried than the rest of the country.
OP said DSLRs, but for video the same thing applies. Downres to something reasonable for sharing, and limit the output-quality transfers to the ones you know you want.

This is how even professionals shooting 50-200GB/day do things-- nobody delivers a HD with every single outtake, but instead they just post a web gallery of the candidates and then deliver the high-res files of the just the final selects.
Ok, guy with the linkjacked summary of a Google TechTalk? XSSI is XSS.
The Charges Against ActionScript 3.0
Curious why you head out before you share pictures? If you did it right there, you could burn x numbers of DVDs.
Not too many businesses have a P/E ratio of 34 with a market cap of 150B. It's a matter of expectations, they were expected to grow more than they did and the stock price had those expectations priced in.
"we should always beware of people trying to push sociological solutions to technological problems"

I'd go along with that. I think ideas like carbon trading are clearly designed to subsidise poorer nations, without actually reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Someone eloquently described such trading systems as "carbon indulgences", in that it makes people feel better about the pollution they produce while actually doing precious little about it in real terms.

http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/carbon_neutral_myth.pdf

My main point is that arguing about global warming is a big waste of time, and we should concentrate on finding efficient, clean and sustainable ways to live as we want to.
Flickr and Smugmug both have unlimited uploading for their photos. Both services are user friendly, even to non-technical users. Flickr's pro service is $25/yr and Smugmug's entry level service is $40/year. I personally host over 50 GB of photos at Smugmug.

My only other piece of advice: upload from somewhere with high upload bandwidth.
Flickr etc won't work since.. - actually, Flickr is a great solution. Just get an Pro account for $25/yr which comes with unlimited uploads and unlimited sets. You can even set up Flickr uploading to upload lower res files right from your DSLR biggies and get the whole upload done much much faster. You can tag each others photos and pick the best by favoriting etc. add comments, ask questions etc. There's much you can do with Flickr - I'd definitely look into that option.
"Almost come" is accurate. There is some major distance to be made in slew of robotics categories.

For instance, robots can still barely and accurately maneuver around using just vision. Slap on 3D like Lidar and it gets expensive both financially and computationally.
The Startup Bibles
Given the context(first two problems), what is a 'box'?
People drive too much and sleep too little. Studies show this time and time again and yet people rarely weigh the cost of commuting and alarm clocks correctly.
OMNI magazine in 1982 ran an article on the procastinator's club, which had been meaning to have meetings for the last couple of decades or so.

I've been thinking about joining. Still not sure yet, though.

(true story)
Next 'Steve Jobs' will probably be Chinese.
They only real-way to "Scale" robots, is to create a system of self-replicating robots. This way, they can organically interact with our (human) needs. Similarly to how one can raise a pig to eat, or, alternately, one can go hunt free range buffalo, one can custom-make a robot for one's particular need, or, instead, allow self-replicating "species" or robots to exist in well-defined areas. For example if one had a swarm of aquatic robots in say a harbor area, these could be remote-control programmed to fetch fish and bring those fish to a centralized net. The robots would replicate themselves, so no need to worry about fixing them or making more. With nano-tech who knows such might be possible. Effectively to maximize/economize robot use we need species "symbiosis" with robot strains. Everybody benefits. Without making robots become "organic"/self-replicating they remain to costly. However, carefully directing the evolution/creation of a symbiotic robotic ecosystem could benefit mankind. Robots are no threat, when handled properly.

Essentially two dangers lurk with robots: one they are economically prohibitive. But flash forward a hundred years and you have a different problem: controlling them. Directing the evolution of robots could solve both problems. In the short term make them more cost effective vis-a-vis population growth, in the long term create symbiotic interdependence with the robot species, by means of orchestrating and directing their initial evolution. It is like a flash flood. You can't stop it, but you can control where the waters go. Similarly we cannot stop the "singularity" the rise of the robots constitute, but we can control it. (Me, my ultimate dream is a robot drag queen, yeah, when I make my millions I'm gonna build me one of those and knock 'em dead at karoake night, lol!)
Dude, sorry for the tone, but yes, you need to snap out of it. I don't feel particularly sorry for you because I was faced with the exact same situation as you, and I ended up in some pretty lofty places. All under my own power, so it's not impossible. No source of funding? Go to a fast food place and get one. You say you code in C#. That's good, it's a technology people expect to pay money for.

Anyway, see my other post about how I did it, just so you have an example.
Liquidity prefs can be a good deal more slippery than what is talked about here.

I have seen it preferred not reach par with common shares until the aquisition price was 3x the investment amount.
I'd heard about TechShop but never been to one (none in my area).The class catalog is absolutely amazing though. Seriously, just 40 bucks gets you in a class with a CNC plasma cutter. Incredible.
iPhone OpenGL Demo - 3D Cube with Texture, Light, Rotate and Zoom options
You can hold downtime to a few minutes for a good chunk of your traffic.

How can you speed up the time it takes for DNS to propagate? Set your TTL low now, before you the move. (Set it to about 300 seconds.) This means that many DNS servers will query your DNS box every 5 minutes, rather than waiting for a day or two.

You cannot know when propogation is "officially complete" as DNS servers around the world may not respect your TTL and serve old results for a long bit.

What you can do is put up a blanket webpage at the old host saying, "Hey folks, we are moving hosts. If you want to visit the new site click here..." and you can use the new IP address if you have your host configured properly.

If you don't "have" nameservers, you'll want to find a company like dnsmadeeasy.com that can do this for you. Many hosts will do this though. Slicehost, a VPS, has a DNS tab in their admin area. Find out if they can do this for you.

So the steps:

1) Get your new site set up. (Use step 5 liberally to test if it is working correctly without doing any switching yet.)

2) If your VPS does DNS, set up your records. If not, get one like DNSMadeEasy.com and set up your records. Remember to set the TTL to 300 seconds. BUT set the records to point to the IP address of your OLD host.

3) Go to your domain registrar like GoDaddy and change the nameserver to whatever DNS site you used in step 2. They will TELL you the names to enter, it'll be like: ns1.namehost.com, ns2.namehost.com.

4) Give it a couple days for the switchover.

5) Ok, it's the day to switch. First update your hosts file on your PC, to do a last minute test of your new site before the switch. (Add the domain and the new IP address, just google to see how this is done. This allows you to test in advance of the move.)

5) Now switch the A records from your old host to your new host. Tail the log file. You should see traffic in a few minutes.

6) Put up a webpage on the old host pointing to the new host.
I just find it a bit interesting that you are supposed to implement things that are given. That sort of defeats the purpose of doing one for a specific language.
yup, and it's mono. If you want 128kbs and stereo (and want to be able to check your mail while listening) check out ooTunes.
You should not need to endure any downtime, even though DNS changes can take days to propagate. The trick is to get DNS working at your new host BEFORE you point your domains at the new host's servers. This way any given person will be hitting the new server or the old server, but it won't matter -- both should be serving the same information.

Other suggestions in this thread, such as reducing the TTL beforehand, will help drastically if any issues arise.
To illustrate my point, I decided not to pursue a fairly cute girl recently because she would cut into my coding and learning time. Nothing in the world is as important to me as my work and my intellectual pursuits.

This may be unpopular on this forum, but in 10-15 years, you should expect your views to change 180 degrees. For that reason, it would be unwise for you to focus so narrowly on your "interests". You are young, even though you may not feel so, and are still in the process of growing. Allow yourself to do so.

After reading a few of your comments in addition to your post, I'm going to side with the crowd that thinks you are whining. That isn't a personal attack, but an understanding of where you are based on what you've written and where I've been in the past.

There are many poor college kids. In fact, I'd say 75% of them can't really afford to go to the school they go to. Yet, there they are. While not having a millionaire for a father makes life more difficult to us all, it shouldn't stop you from what you want to do.

Yes, getting a PT job, taking out a big loan and possibly going to a cheaper school will both be tough and a compromise from the ideal. So fucking what? 99% of life is compromise. What matters is that you continue to move in your intended direction. What you can't get today, ensure you can achieve tomorrow.

I don't know you, but what I read from you is fear. Fear of failing, and fear of disappointment. Your excuses are only justifications that you use to avoid admitting that you are afraid to act. This happens to everyone, and is certainly common around your age - transitioning from child to adult. Do not allow this fear to control your life, or you will never accomplish anything. You will die lonely, unloved and incomplete.

Your situation matters little. The obstacles in front of you are stagnant. What matters is what you choose to do. You are the part of the equation that is flexible and fluid. Don't waste that.

PS - Go ask that girl out. You will look back on it later and wonder what if, so save yourself the heartache by just finding out now.
This would be extremely appealing to us. We actually hired a marketing copywriter but had to let her go due to price. How could we reach you? :)
I'm with the whole DVD thing. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a box of discs in a postal van. The ping time on the other hand...
On-Demand Computing: A Brutal Slog
From the VC market to ThinkBase and Modular Innovation
I'd love to hear what you'd say about what we're working on.
I agree, I think there is a serious hole that can be addressed.

I mean if your service could take my idea "We make reading feeds from Gmail easy" and create compelling copy that will drive signups, I'd use it often.
The problem with moving is the cost! It's can take a lot of money to move, especially to SV, Boston, or NYC. Plus, as an out-of-state resident (state) colleges will be too expensive.

However, UMass Boston has a pretty good CS programme at a cost a lot less than the big local private schools.
If you want to know the health of an ecosystem, look at the health of the pilot fish, and not at the whales.

The indications of latent rot or the incursions of new competitors and of asymmetric solutions can be masked by the sheer scale of an established business.

The pilot fish are the leading indicators.

Whales can easily coast on revenues and their customer bases and by squeezing their ecosystems and their partners for a decade or more, even with their businesses and business models rotting away underneath them.

If the startups in SV are getting squeezed, then SV has something to worry about.
From the sounds of it, it might be very likely that his father is not the curmudgeon that he appears, but is in fact attempting to teach his son a very valuable lesson, one that will allow him to avoid the perils that his mother faces.
I fear that a wife and kids will be a game changer too. I feel a sense of urgency for many reasons, but that is definitely one of them.

There are many others, the opportunity cost to your corporate career for example. The reduced bank account balance from where it could be if you sold your soul. And the list goes on.

As much as we like to romanticize the process, there are a lot of risks and pitfalls. Luckily for a lot of us, it is not a choice and we just aim to minimize these hurdles!
There's a photo in our office of a couple employees handing hard drives down a chain like a fire brigade. The caption: "The bandwidth is great. It's the latency that kills you."
I'd love it if you wanted to have a go at one or more summaries on Squeezed Books ( http://www.squeezedbooks.com ). I'm currently running a contest where the winner gets a free book, which isn't much of a prize, but might be some free publicity, and isn't a lot of work either.
Ditto. I'm a bicoastal engineer-turned-founder, formerly of O'Reilly, Odeo/Twitter, and Wesabe, with a company that builds what are essentially professional networking experiences for tech conferences. So on the from your perspective, I'd be happy to share contacts and from our perspective we're about to do a rev of our site and could really use some strategic feedback. I'm tony@crowdvine.com.
Why Microsoft will fail to do anything significant with Powerset
Can you throw NSFW beside that link please?
Great it's a good start! :) Just be careful that you don't take courses that won't transfer to a 4-year college (beats me how you'd determine this).

Plus, this discussion is good for anyone else in your position and it'd be good to keep the dialog going as you may get some other useful suggestions for the future.

Why not apply to MIT maybe they'll give you a scholarship! U never know. :)
This is a really good idea. I keep sending the product description for my YC app to people and asking them to help wordsmith the value proposition, and I keep getting emails back with marketing ideas and questions about logistics. This has happened three times in the last week.
Forget about hacking - your servers might get stolen
Locksmiths Pissed Off At Geeks For Letting Out The Secret: Lockpicking Is Easy
I think you're coming at this from the wrong direction. The goal, presumably, is to create a successful business. If you're going to reverse engineer a process, start from that goal, not from an arbitrary step along the way (YCombinator).

It sounds like you:

- don't have an idea you're passionate about

- don't have much (any?) entrepreneurship experience

- have difficulties finishing a project once you lose interest

- want to "make it"

My advice would be:

- evaluate what "making it" means. Hint: it's not YC. Is it just working on something cool? (you don't necessarily need to start a business for that). Is it setting up a successful "lifestyle" business? Is it getting seed/angel/VC funding, hiring employees, and dealing with the responsibility towards your investors/employees/customers, and working towards an IPO or acquisition?

- Find someone who has what you might be missing: passion about an idea, ability for long-term commitment to a project, (possibly) entrepreneurship experience. Provide the technical strength, and rely on them to keep you motivated when you need it.

- I want to say "just do a cool project", but it's not necessarily that easy - if you haven't so far, maybe there is a reason for it, like the ones you outlined. On the other hand, I AM going to say it - just do a cool project! It's up to you to make this time different.
mohammed unis? not that there isn't real value in micro-finance but I'm still baffled how a financier/banker gets the noble peace prize.
My partner is 25 & matches the more common YC image (it's an unusual match-up, but works really well).

The other 39 y/o from my cycle was part of a team of 30-somethings.
Yeah, I've already decided to go to a local community college that is a launchpad for OSU. It's 1400 a semester, I can pay that in cash.

I wasn't calling myself a flake, someone implied I could be seen as one.

I'll be focusing on leveraging high grades in order to get future scholarships, and I'll look into the consequences of dropping a class.

Thanks.
"Now Silicon Valley is in for a long-overdue reality check, one that should worry one and all. Why? Because the news coming out of advertising-focused companies is not good."

The article does a good job of explaining how the poor economic conditions are impacting internet advertising, but this has nothing to do with a reality check. People have less money to spend so they buy less things. That doesn't mean that internet advertising models are misguided.
No heartache, if she'd been interesting enough to pursue for the sake of long-term, I wouldn't have minded losing the time.

The problem is that the kind of girl who interests me intellectually and understands me (outside of my programming interests) is supremely rare.

I've mostly accepted that either chance will favor me and I'll run into the "girl", or I'll focus on my work. I don't really care.

It doesn't help that I refuse to have kids, that narrows down my options as well.
My Father could afford to pay for me to go to Princeton, in cash, on a yearly basis.

It has nothing to do with debt management.

I am extremely frugal, and as said elsewhere, I'll be going to a community college I found. I am paying the tuition in cash. That isn't something someone with poor finance skills can do.
I'm not making 1600 anymore, that was when I was a programmer. I make ~1050 a month post-tax.
I highly doubt MIT would want me, my high school grades were mediocre, and I did get a 28 on my ACT, but that was with a hangover. I didn't learn my lesson regarding grades and working in school until it was too late.
JavaScript = C + Lisp
Don't understimate the bandwidth of of a truckload of hard drives. I.e. fedexing hard drives is the easiest and fastest.

[There is a file sharing society in Japan, by invitation only, whose members ship encrypted hard drives to each other. Not just for bandwidth reasons.]
I was discussing this with a friend. I think I'd like it better if it only allowed you to record an audio note that is erased as it is played.

The current message is a little too easy to capture with copy/paste and thus makes it easier for people to leave the info sitting around on their clipboard, screenshots, etc.

A good old audio self-destruct message would be very neat.
Get an Amazon S3 account and use an S3-compatible client to upload/download the files.

You can also set permissions on the files so that people can download them directly.
There and Back again (commuting sucks)
Oh! I was talking about static XSS then! The example Neil gave in his talk was about dynamic XSS. I thought XSSI meant that and "XSS" meant this - http://www.cgisecurity.com/articles/xss-faq.shtml
we sacrificed an extra bedroom in order to live closer to work and in a better city. we have no regrets at all, we love our area and having a quick 30 minute bus ride to and from work without having to drive at all is a blessing. eventually we'd like another bedroom but that may not happen for a long time!!
Uhm... Lots of good suggestions here. Given the innomence of your question, I'll take the liberty of assuming you won't take offense to me questioning some of the more fundamental assumptions. Why do you need to host your own DNS? Honestly, it's a real pain. And if you're asking questions like this, you probably don't need anything fancy. The control panels at the major registrars are pretty advanced these days.

Apologies if you're a DNS rockstar, no offense intended.
I've always thought that it's the loans that end up raising tuition. It's the same way the easy loans raised housing prices. Too much money chasing too few goods.
try the "immediate payment required" in that case. it's a good feature that I've used many times.
I don't think the lesson he is attempting to teach you has anything to do with money, btw.
I found a solution, but I'd still like to correct you.

You can make that kind of money part-time at a bar, while homeless and never eating.

9k is the sum of what you'd make working part-time at a bar here.
You're 20. Of course you don't want to have kids. Very few people at 20 want kids. I certainly didn't.

In fact, at 26, I was settled on being single for the rest of my life. I'm now 33, married, and have a 1 year old son. I laugh at my past self and understand how naive I was.

I'm not suggesting you'll be the same, just that you pay attention to the fact that you are seeing the world through the eyes of a 20 year old. :-)

You won't run into "the girl" though if you are standing still.