skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you have no money to put down, why won't you take a beginner, instead of something you apparently can't afford ("an iOS developer with a few years of experience and some apps that have made it to the store with some success")?

just asking..
alias :m :method

<3 <3 <3
Reading books is only going to get you so far.

Join a startup for a few years and get operational experience. While you're there don't just limit yourself to hacking. Get to know your co-workers (should be easy, it's a small organization right?), offer to help out cross-functionally, etc. Gain visibility and understanding into what the founders and managements think about long-term and on the day-to-day.

Once you've got your feet wet, then take the jump yourself.
Brett and I were just discussing this - and he put up a post summing it up nicely: http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-semi-regular-reminder-...

Short version? We planned on it taking at least 5 years. Armin's point is that Python 3 isn't "there yet" in terms of demand an adoption. Python 3.2 (which increases performances, and fixes bugs) is just coming out. Armin's point - backed by his comments here, is just that demand isn't high enough for him to dedicate the resources to port.

On the other hand, earlier today he was committing bug fixes to the Python 3 source tree, so there's obvious forward movement.
With moderation this isn't an issue. Not too many WP pages are submitted anyway. Besides, there are more than enough TechCrunch articles submitted to HN and those are usually just lame linkbait that are light on the tech. Why not ask if there is any reason to submit those?
Tablets Demand Magazines Rethink Themselves
Thoreau Was Right: Nature Hones the Mind
MS's approach to research is fundamentally different than Google's. Google's approach is about creating better Google products. Microsoft's approach (which is really Bill Gates's dream) is to advance science.

Both are good goals. But if you ask a researcher from MS how important it is to get in a future version of Windows, they may well shrug their shoulders. Their feeling is if they can advance technology then all boats rise, which is good for Microsoft.

I must say when I'm actually doing research, and not just dev work for product Version Next, I don't want to do unit tests and a whole bunch of other cruft. My code isn't meant to be shipped to customers. Its meant to test a hypothesis.
Regulating Google’s Results? Law Prof Calls ‘Search Neutrality’ Incoherent
Point 9 ("Realize that there's an ebb and flow") is definitely something to remember. Even when I'm really motivated on a project, the motivation never seems to last for longer than weeks. I guess knowing that this happens to every body, and thus knowing to simply ride out the troughs (so to speak) is the best way forward.

A quote I like which sums this point up is: "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommended it daily."
The danger with integrating research as part of day-to-day development is that you might not end up with groundbreaking or disruptive innovation. The problem is that forces which are controlling day-to-day work are essentially controlled by value network of the company (social and technical resources within and between businesses) and constrained by resources, values, and processes of the company. So, there is a danger of missing inventions which will replace the current (profitable) way do doing things (i.e., start Groupon kind of business model, or Twitter, or Facebook).

However, I also 100% agree that having pure "research labs" is not effective: in many cases some great idea from research arm are just forgotten.

Clayton Christensen wrote a few books on this topic (and I am a very big fan of Clayton Christensen's work).

I would like to also mention that Google is not the only company which has this approach: it seems to me that majority of companies in Silicon Valley operate like this (I don't think Facebook has "research labs", but they do invent things).
Exercise. It gives you energy and takes your mind of things for a while. We're not meant to sit on our buts in front of a screen all day. I know it's hard when you're tired and overworked, but it's indispensible.

Also, sleep and eat well.
I met Clarridge during college. I took a class taught by an ex-spook where we read spy novels and talked about the ethical dilemmas involved. We read Clarridge's autobiography, "A Spy for all Seasons" and then he came and glowered at us for 3 hours and answered questions. He really doesn't like the CIA these days anymore. If you're interested in this sort of thing, his book's pretty darn good: http://www.amazon.com/Spy-All-Seasons-Life-CIA/dp/0743245369
10 Billion Apps Downloaded
I believe the major issue right now is Red Hat. I can't find the emails detailing the issue right now, but apparently for applications like Django, they are worried about long term support in RHES for python 2.4 or 2.5 for at least another year or two.

So for python applications that are designed for server deployment, you need to look carefully at what versions your commercial linux users are running. While smaller deployments are important too, the enterprise customers are the ones that will say when 3.x is relevant or not.
I am learning things with moderate success. I double-majored in econ and physics, but want to add CS principles to my toolkit. I've been using open course material to do so, and I've found it very valuable.

It isn't so much the lectures--they are useful, but only as valuable as a real lecture (utility varies with your learning style). It is the rest of the support material that makes sharing this stuff so valuable for independent learners.

An example from iTunes U: Berkeley's CS61A has webcasts, but nearly the entire course is online. You have the textbook (SICP, available free online), and can download the lecture notes, homeworks, labs, old exams, and scheme libraries from the course website. You have most of the course (except the most valuable parts: office hours, discussion section, and no TA in your lab).

But the value is in the structure of the material: learn this, build this, learn this, now build this, learn this, do this project. It slows you down, necessary because you can probably read much faster than you can 'do.' When just reading a textbook, it is too easy to burn through it and not force yourself to practice the material. With the course materials, you have a reason to pace yourself, test yourself, and have discrete goals to work toward.

note: There are freenode channels (#sicp, #scheme), and StackOverflow that may give you help that approximates office hours.
I guess it depends on how we define Cyberpunk, but I would tend to think "No, not yet."

I think the main themes in Cyberpunk center on a dystopian society where the techno-literate are able to carve out a life among oppressive, capitalist regimes (in most cases Corporate Nation-States).

I think much of the technology imagined in Cyberpunk has come to be, but I don't think the technology is the important part. I think the society it envisions is what separates it from more traditional science fiction.

That said, I actually imagine a cyberpunk future longingly (even if I don't necessarily think it will come to be).
> which includes PHP (eval() and base64_encode())

At least Python, Ruby and Perl have those functions too. The problem is not related to PHP being able to eval(), it's:

1. Inadequate usage of PHP as template engine, where templates are coming from untrusted sources. Think of this as very extended case of non-sanitizing user input.

2. "Dancing bunnies"-type problem. A lot of users don't understand what they are doing. They are promised they would get a nice theme, so they install it.

> can't have multiple users in the DB

Wrong, it's perfectly possible. Unless you are stuck with some god-forsaken cheap crappy LAMP hosting.

Disclaimer: I don't like PHP at all, and I try to avoid it. Experts say, and I totally agree that there are a lot of various problems in LAMP ecosystem, but they lie in very different direction.
Without a massive boost in senility, a lobotomy or way too many psychoactive drugs, isn't it kind of hard for one to become a "former genius?"
Well... to make it easier you can think of classes as normal functions returning instances. For almost any practical purpose, that's true. Also, str.capitalize is (for any practical purpose again :) ) a one-argument function that takes a string and returns a capitalised string.
Heh, nothing wrong with a bit of debate, as long as it doesn't end in flame wars. Halfway through writing my above post I stopped and thought, is this really worth it? Will I prove anything with this post? And I decided to finish my thoughts because I really was interested in what you have to say in response to my "arguments". Anyways, thanks for not resorting to childish arguments and put-downs like on other sites.
It looked like this then:

http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes...

Love the image at the bottom that gave instructions on how to size your browser window.
The issue - obfuscated code in third-party templates - is hardly inherent in PHP. The same technique can be used in any other popular web language.

For example: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Base64.html
Java-style sandboxing prevents all run code from having access to anything important on the filesystem (&c) which a) wouldn't really work for a server-run application and b) wouldn't at all prevent the type of nasty that shows up in those WP themes.

I'm not terribly familiar with Lua sandboxing, but a cursory overview suggests that absolutely nothing would prevent it from including similar nastiness if used in display code.

In any case, something like a website theme in any language, can always display HTML that is at least that hidden. So sure, kill base64_decode in php, but as long as you have a Turing-complete language which is at least moderately inevitable if you allow any logic in your templating system at all and you can implement the equivalent trivially.

If you completely neuter your templating system, then do something like include inline base 64 in CSS as image data, decode & exec using JS. Google's spiders will run JS now, unless I'm mistaken, so that's just as good from an SEO standpoint.
> can't have multiple users in the DB

What?

PHP doesn't have a DB, and MySQL sure as hell allows multiple users.
Quora Underscores Need For Corporate Ambassadors
Sounds to me like join would work better as a function ;)
Being spammy can be malicious. The black hat SEO folks know full well that these sorts of spammy links can lead to innocent folks' WordPress blogs getting eventually penalized or blacklisted from search engine indexing.
I like the http:/ typo. It really shows how unfamiliar the general public was with the internet just fifteen years ago.
So two constitutes a bunch now? Especially when one is in reply to the notion that "techies" are going to buy it when it has an inferior build, inferior specs and a bulkier size, and the other was a general comment at the top level of comments?

"all over the place is an exaggeration". Clearly I'm not a marketing bot, that's equally absurd.
Google Friend Connect
MSFT research is much more like research of great American companies of the past, Bell, AT+T etc - I'm sure this is what they were aiming for.
Gaming for Science
I find myself stuck in those circumstances of anylsis paralysis. Being concious of it, such as after reading this article, helps you say "feck it, just do it somehow".

The stats coming from Google Analytics, Adwords, and other advertising data still overwhelms me though.
Just so you guys know this script has changed a lot since I opened it up. It now has way better output formatting, the option to install Ruby from source or RVM, better stdout and stderr redirection to the install.log and even captures signals for things like ctrl-c to kill the script nicely. Thanks for all the input and I hope it's found to be useful :)
I'm all for sharing ideas, and I'm happy that these ideas have been working for this company. However, I do wish people in the start-up community would stop presuming that there are two ways, theirs and the wrong one. Reading too many articles like this, one might conclude that the only viable business model is:

1. Identify mildly useful/interesting idea.

2. Produce cheap implementation.

3. Sell to the general public for peanuts.

4. Refine to maximise number of people and size of peanuts.

Given that the culture around HN seems to be heavily biased towards businesses that do follow this model, I think it would be interesting to hear from investors and/or successful founders about other ideas as well. Does this model dominate HN simply because of the emphasis on angel investing, which maybe doesn't fit as well with other models?

Do investors like YC also fund businesses producing products/services for niche markets rather than the general public? What about products/services where getting to launch fundamentally requires some serious R&D that is going to take time and money, and you can't just produce a MVP in a few weeks and iterate, but where the prices you can charge customers/users are much higher? Maybe this happens, but we don't tend to hear about them so often because there are not so many and/or the people doing them happen not to be the ones who participate here or post their progress on a company site/blog?

If so, what extent do the sorts of ideas in the linked article generalise, and what sorts of processes have proved most useful/important in successful businesses with more specialised/long-term/high-value products and services?
This is topic that is near and dear to my heart as well. I'm not sure there is a well worn path especially if you're looking to start a business (i.e. something that puts cash in your pocket vs. "starting a startup").

From my experience the trickest and most difficult areas are around customer acquisition and monetization. Both are sort of black arts and are tricky (at least for me) to learn. As best as I can tell these each take a lot of practice. Anyone can list out tactics from the "big list" but knowing which ones to use when and how to taylor them to a particular business isn't easy. Typically you can't know which will work in a given scenario until you've tried them in the individual business in question. It appears that this is an area where deep business experience (at a P&L level) really pays off.

You talk about build, learn and then acquire but the devil is the details and your perspective on how to approach these things is of critical importance.

I think there is huge benefit (especially for technical folks) in spending some time upfront during the idea stage (i.e. BEFORE coding) really thinking through who will pay you, why they will pay you and a rough sketch on how that scales up into some meaningful cashflow. Do the back of the envelop arithmetic and prove it makes some basic sense. This sort of backwards thinking on how you will actually make money from your efforts is the difference between coding software and starting a software business regardless of how small or large it will be. This business level thinking should be a key part of your everyday idea validation process. Something that you are doing all the time as you have ideas for businesses to start. It helps you develop some instincts on what might make money and what actually won't.

Obviously you'll be wrong in a million different ways that you'll never know until you actually plough forward with an idea but you'll be less wrong than you would have been if you just pick the first cool idea and start coding. You'll also develop useful assumptions that you can check. Learn to share these thoughts with other people (and potential customers) to deepen your understanding.

You're likely already in good position on the technical side so I'd suggest focusing on sales, marketing and general business side.

For books you'll likely find a lot of value on http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/ and on http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.... Some also mentioned Four Steps to the Epiphany which I think is required (if not totally pleasant) reading.

Books are great. They will give you useful background and food for thought but at the end of the day you need to JFDI. If you're like me that will be a bit scary but there really isn't another option if this is path you want to pursue.

It also helps if you make some connections with other folks who have some experience to get ideas, perspective etc.

If you're interested in discussing in more depth my contact info is in my profile.
I love how all of the figures on the patent are flowcharts.
I am about as big (read: little) of a fan of PHP as the next guy but how in the hell are these problems inherent to PHP? If I were to run COBOL code from untrusted sources on my server you can forget about security.
Computational Intelligence (Swarm Intelligence, genetic algorithms, wavelets, emergence, etc) seems to be making a resurgence. This is good, there could be a lot more research happening in these topics :-)
http://www.endeavor.org/blog/interview-wgina-bianchini-new-m...

"Entrepreneurs in Residence" is fantastic.
Liar Paradox
Proose web service released using Goose article extractor
based on the open source Goose article extractor from Gravity Labs: https://github.com/jiminoc/goose

curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" -X POST -d '{"uri": "http://threecrickets.com/prudence/rest/} http://prudence.textmethod.com:8080/proose/page/
It is true. Microsoft bought from PrimeSense the IR depth sensor technology, but all the body recognition/tracking software was developed by Microsoft Research.
"Over the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class."

Sounds like the government is now outsourcing paying for private intelligence and security services as well as the work. I can see why 'small government' people would like this but from the oversight and human rights perspectives it seems like a really bad idea.
Yes, that's my projection. Sorry for the ad hominem argument. It just smelled like a rhetorical trick, so I got carried away. I also admit my post was a bit trolley (I expected down-votes and no reply, actually). But I don't think it was nonsense. I merely stated my (strong) beliefs without the usual "I believe" disclaimer. There's a reason why:

Either God exists, or it doesn't. Of atheists and deists, one group is wrong. As a matter of fact. As you know, I don't believe in God. If I were polite, I would stop there. Same thing for a deist. We could have a conversation, say "I (don't) believe in God", and it would still look like we "respect" the other's beliefs, and therefore we respect the other, period.

Trouble starts when I say "God doesn't exist" (it really doesn't). It's offensive. It makes too obvious that I think deists are wrong (they really are). Such a direct attack to their belief is of course not polite at all (yes, I am not polite). Politeness is secondary, however: we face Freaking Real Death! I bet many would like to solve that problem (and there are slim hopes that it will eventually be).

On the other hand, a deist that really believes in God, should tell me that it exists, that I'm wrong. Being polite is again secondary. Hey, my non-believer's very soul is at stake! I certainly wouldn't want to Burn in Hell for, say, wanting to be immortal.

Another point. You said earlier:

> […] "Is there a God?" is both unprovable and unfalsifiable. […]

This is weird to my ears. I assume that for any thing that have observable effect, science has a hope of detecting (and proving the presence of) that thing. God is no exception. So, if you're right, then the existence of God doesn't have any observable effect (by contraposition). Then, belief in God, an observable effect, isn't linked in any way to the actual existence of God. Meaning, belief in God has no valid justification.

Plus, the way that typical monotheists religions depict it, not only God is observable, it has actually been observed. For instance, any miracle God have performed should have a hope of being detected by archaeologists. (Unless God cleverly erased the evidence but I don't recall anything like that on the Bible. To my knowledge, it isn't written that God evades science.)

Plus, God is almost always depicted as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent (let's live aside sentience etc.). Well, those three characteristics combined should be sufficient to have a pretty big observable effect: living in the best possible world. If we don't (it's pretty clear we don't), then something is off.

So, saying that the existence of God can't be tested strikes me as an extremely weak justification for belief in God. Weaker that plainly stating that God exists because three famous, old, Holy books say so (authority can be a valid argument).
I would say today is more like cypherpunk versus cyperpunk.

The rebel are more like ubermensch(in the sense they want immortality, cyber implants, and all the ways that can improve human beings' intelligence and body) opposing authoritarian institutions.

The ruler is more like the mishmash of elites and majority tyrants.
I don't know specifics about Kinect, but I do know that MSR has done a ton of work on computer vision and its applications over the last ten or fifteen years, and I would be extremely surprised if that work didn't inform the efforts of whoever did invent Kinect.
WikiLeaks found info on P2P networks, say snoops
Loved this article. Couldn't agree more. +1.
Steve Jobs Talks About His Rise and Fall (1985)
I find that having a day job and other life distractions actually helps with this a lot. I spend a lot of the day thinking things through so that by the time I get to having the time to do something I'm ready to actually do it.
Except that it only makes sense in the context of strings, so it makes perfect sense to make it a string method.
What is there to drink that tastes as good as beer and wine?
Rails looks for files in specific locations to execute code, not arbitrary encoded strings.

Yes, it's possible to do, but much harder than eval'ing a string in the resource file.
James Grimmelmann (the prof being cited) has a strong software engineering background; he worked with me on PREfast in Microsoft Research and also was in Office for a while. So he understands technology well. That said I often disagree with him, including on this issue.

His full paper is well worth reading. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034...
Actually, it's extremely easy to stop being a genius. No need to damage your brain; the only thing required is being prone to social conditioning.
Ask HN: Your words of wisdom to live by?
I'm the CTO for a non-profit that mentors kids in high school to help them discover their passions early in life. When I talk to the kids I mentor and give advice to, I always try my best to impart my most important words of wisdom to them. Throughout my own life, several people have passed on principles, words to live by, and advice that has helped shape who I am today.

I sat down tonight and started writing out different things that I use to guide myself through life. I thought it would be a good idea to keep a list that I can pass on to kids and, someday, my own children.

While I was writing this stuff down, I thought getting input from the HN community could be a very valuable exercise. With so many intelligent, successful, and thoughtful people, I think we could really build an awesome list.

So, please contribute your words of wisdom, principles to live by, or anecdotes that have guided you in life. I'll start with a few of the most important to me in the comments. After a week or so, I'll compile these into a webpage and get it online. Thanks!