skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Nothing remotely of interest here."

Why not? It got me thinking. I often return to PHP, even for things like computer graphics. Everybody knows PHP is slow as hell with computer graphics. So why do I use PHP for it? My answer would be: quick results. No need to setup a project, framework or whatever. Just create an empty file and you are ready to prototype, create a dirty hack, create a quick fix, have a proof of concept.
Nitpick - I think you mean "revenue" not "earnings". Nice article though - very inspiring.
Man, this hits home... his description of a 6 is spot on. I need to let one go today.
Damn, 55-years-old is middle-aged now?
Our wealth has grown exponentially in recent decades but poor people still work 9 to 5 or more.

Wealth is manufactured by machines not people.

Some generation has to close the gap between how wealthy society is and how much average member of society has to work for same basic needs.

You can't make basic necessities cost always nearly same amount of work because that work thanks to technology is producing more and more wealth.

You can't keep prices of meals to be higher than recent technological wonder. Someone at some point will call bullshit on that. "My sandwich is not worth same amount of wealth as 4GB flash thumb drive. They just want me to pay this much for sandwich to keep me working because I need sandwich. I'll just pass on working, buy cheapest food and see how this works out. They don't seem to want me in their companies anyway."

This unemployed generation can be the first one to take advantage of wealth humans get from technology en masse without need to cunningly trick everyone else out of their share. They'll get their share just by being more or less human dead weight that rich won't be able to shake off because they can't kill them or even let them die because there's for the first time too many of them.
Venture capitalists are not your friends
Profit doesn't mean money, profit means gain of wealth. Economic activity is not a zero-sum game if the money supply is fixed.
Suppose you have a 'democratic' country where the same party has been in power since independance.

The party leaders have got rich by telling everyone else the country is booming - when it was all a property scam.
Now they have 30% youth unemployment and are cutting school and college funding to pay for it.

They were quiet happy to support terrorists in another country for their own political gains - they might want to start worrying about where the next car bomb will be placed.

And this is isn't in the middle east ......
Its just not about choice of languages or tool sets. Its about freedom . On windows platform there is no one there to forbid you to deploy your applications as Apple do with their Apple store.
Great post. Do you have some sort of referral scheme whereby current users can recommend the product to their coworkers and get a discount if someone signs up? I think that could help you grow it if not, your existing users spend all day alongside your target users - give them a reason to talk about it!
I think one thing that we have in the US is that unemployment centers were set up in a different age and are designed to serve unskilled labor--but there are not so many unskilled jobs. Some of the training programs that are paid for are short "certificate" programs of dubious worth.

But, here's a question: currently sites like ODesk provide contract labor. Some of the jobs are for people to do research (for example, I wanted a listing of high schools/contact information for a side project I'm working on). I've only done a couple of postings, but I got very few American applicants. Is it just not well publicized? The rates are low, so it's not a good long term solution, but in some cases for "simple" research jobs, the rates could be $10/hr, which compared to some service jobs is competitive (since many service jobs here also don't provide health care)--especially in some lower cost of living states.
I was a passionate PERL developer for many years. Then, one day, I met Ruby.

I don't think I will ever go back, mostly because I love how Ruby does objects and it has a nicer syntax.
I grew up with an ex-drill sergeant for a father. My dad was a skilled carpenter, a certified electrician and welder (TIG, MIG and Stick), and has fixed every single car I've owned and totalled.

Passed down to myself and my brothers, we're both skilled in welding, my brother now has his own electrician shop. I work in IT. If suddenly my IT job goes away, I have a trade to fall on.

Skilled trades and physical labor it seems to be lost arts on my generation (I'm 25) and that depresses me.
Perl can definitely be more compact than Python for regex and parsing but I am surprised that he need to move from Ruby to Perl. Ruby borrows much of the regex and quote syntax from Perl.
Everyone involved is on a Mac, and the ruby code to control Excel is OLE based, thus Windows only. Also, the files are .xls, which doesn't have a writer method in ruby (that I'm aware of), although there is an .xlsx library.

Perl's ParseExcel and WriteExcel worked great in this case, and easily handle edge cases like leading zeros on zipcodes, formatting directives, etc.

As always YMMV.
Great thanks! We've been building this for awhile, getting input from tons of journalists and editors, but the more the merrier!
Eh ... My mistake. I posted in the wrong thread! Sorry about that.
I don't think they'd be jealous - Armor Games are ridiculously in tune with fun, nobody makes more hits than them.

Angry Birds might have them beat on the iPhone but 200 million minutes a day is probably a lot less than people spend on the Armor Games website, Flash and iPhone games - I track tens of millions of minutes a day spent on just some of the games they've produced.
They mention the product lifecycle being short as a primary reason for not wanting to bring on new employees. If it takes someone 12 months to get up to speed in an 18 month product lifecycle, it is too costly.

I've got to wonder what kind of industry takes 12 months to get up to speed unless you've got workers coming in with absolutely no training and education. For most programmers I know, the worst case ramp up time is around 3 months. That is often with a project that will never be profitable, much less make it for 18 months.

There are other fiscally attractive reasons to hire young so I'd think if training was the only problem, we could solve that problem. The problem I see with regards to education in most companies is that there is simply no one on staff who can do the training effectively or is given the time to do so. Perhaps this will open the door for the return of a mini trade school in the form of an app.
You are correct, mining did increase the money supply! I hugely oversimplified things. But central banks do tend to be a more steady supply of new currency then mines.
There was a recent XKCD[1] on pairs of words that sound good together and quite a few of those domains were available. So I don't know what it'll be yet, but my next project is going to live at lasernarwhal.com.

[1]http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/04/trochee-chart/
Zuckerberg: I'm being stalked on Facebook
...or minorities, or women
The simple answer is: These kids are training for the wrong jobs. College (in many areas) is a waste. Trade schools (vo-tech) offer a (almost 100%) guarantee of employment.

A trade is a gateway to self employment (once you have your hours in for licensing).

My brother has his master electrician's license in two states. He has more work than he knows what to do with.

I have two friends who recently went back to school (one finishing undergrad business/marketing the other MBA). Their job outlook is _poor_. The market is flooded with people that have _soft_ skills.

Our company is still hiring network technicians. Again a two year degree with _hard_ skill requirements. (Cisco certs, etc).

Tech school is way cheaper than college and your job prospects are good.
Did you try http://code.google.com/intl/it/webtoolkit/speedtracer/ ?
An important point to note here is that especially when it comes to programming, a recent grad != zero experience.

Personally I'm not even a graduate yet (1.5 years to go -ish), but I can already cite 5 to 7 years of experience in the industry depending on how stringent you want to be and at least 12 years of general coding experience.

I would wager a lot of those "scrappy young companies chock full of enthusiastic fresh graduates" were in a similar position with people who actually had a lot of experience despite being fresh grads.
Old guys rant about things. And drone on about the old days. And often propose "old-fashioned" solutions. Which confuse and worry young hiring managers.

Yes, I'm an old guy.
I tried Perl and moved to Python. With Ruby, I really like what I see. Unfortunately, I have spent quite a bit of time with Python and know it too well to want to move.
I've read several articles about Startup America, and I still don't know exactly what it is or how I can use it.
> it doesn't make much practical sense now

It helps to read the artice? Anyway, it's my goal to avoid "most programmers."
"Middle Aged" Geeks generally have other commitments.

Judging by my dad's experience in the IT industry. He's just too savvy. Younger employees are seen to be easier to manipulate and more like to fall for the tricks that big employers like to use.

Fundamentally. Young geeks are massively cheaper and eager to work for less.
could you point out the fundamental flaw, please?
Deflation sounds like in theory is a good thing for savers. In practice, its pernicious, harmful to everyone, and leads to a vicious cycle of economic contraction that can often take decades to get out of. See: Japan. This is a helpful primer: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/why-is-deflation...
I take those into account but disregard them because of my experience with asymmetrical umbrella movements. Because a dozen griefers do something and call themselves Anonymous or are labelled with it by the media doesn't mean that they have the capability to define a movement. It's not insignificant, but at the same time, it's barely significant. Groups with these formations are defined by their most significant actions, not their least.
Social Scientist Sees Bias Within
I said "viable".

Unfortunately, "Am I FORTRAN?" is the question that goes hand in hand with "Am I realistic for scientific computing".

c'est la vie.
Smart Companies Make Money By Being Useful
Steve is absolutely right that government doesn't understand the challenges facing startups.

For example, I'd put "access to affordable health care" above "access to capital" as a barrier to getting a small business or startup off the ground. 10 years ago I paid $75/month for comprehensive health care, today I pay about $1000/month for bare bones coverage. I can't even think about expanding with those costs. (For anyone wondering, this is in the NYC area).

I think it's time to stop talking startups being "Ramen profitable". My cofounder and I are stuck in our consulting day jobs until our startup becomes "health care" profitable.
Does crowdfunding work? Here's what we know.
Honestly, did you even read the article?
1) It's always been the teacher's fault, then other people's kids, other parents, but never our snowflake.

2) I don't know if the money spend has actually increased. My state, Florida, used to use lottery profits to complement state spending, then used it to supplement state spending cuts.

Luckily, I graduated before the bubble popped (the surplus years) because so much of the state and county budget was based around building fees, property taxes, title transfers, etc.
Yep, TechStars just open sourced the Seed Accelerator model
I have to agree. I don't really mind seeing articles like this on HN sometimes and I confess I submit some articles like this at times. The discussion here is what I am really interested in.
A Staggering Look at Baggage Fees
The Best Questions For A First Date
same question for you...has it worked for you or anyone you know?
You are right, I think. What I was trying to say is, a lot of the people recommending college in these situations cite the "life experience"—which I wholeheartedly agree with—but, that might not be coupled to college :)
It's a good offer if you want those things, but note that the bundle is bunch of free[1] coupons, not free products - that is, you'll still have to spend money to get the benefits. (E.g. you get a free upgrade from a $25 to a $125 plan.)

[1] Where "free" means "in exchange for spamming your Twitter/Facebook friends".
Someone hiring for a cashier position would be uncomfortable with your "just don't tell the whole truth" attitude.
To spin it the other way: In software engineering the compensation tends to be much more based on skills and less on seniority than in other fields (mostly because the skill is easier to demonstrate and test than in other fields). Therefore, more senior people, who expect a boost to the compensation comparable to the one other professionals get due to their seniority, often find trouble finding a job that would satisfy their expectations.
awesome! <tips hat>
I've never seen this problem better solved in a web framework than in some combination of libraries. I'm sure it can be done and I welcome people who want to do it, all I'm saying is that I couldn't justify the ROI on it myself. On our projects, we get 90% of the way there by using a server-side REST library coupled with a small Javascript library on the client to handle the common paths.

Anywho, cynics are useful- they make us reconsider the value proposition we are putting forward. However, an idea shouldn't be discarded just because a cynic addressed it :)
Unicode is a character set, and the only character set really worth speaking of. The Unicode character set includes almost every character in every writing system on Earth. A string is a piece of text, i.e. an ordered sequence of characters all taken from the same character set.

A character encoding is a mapping/function/algorithm/set of rules which can be used to convert a string into a sequence of bytes and back again.

A character set may have multiple encodings. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are two possible encodings of the Unicode character set.
HP Touchsmart 610 Adds webOS Card-Like UI?
CoffeeScript Oddities
Salaries top out at age 40
If the money supply was fixed, we wouldn't gain more dollars but we would gain greater purchasing power with those dollars, right?
Eh not sure I agree with that much.

First books/discovery is a bit of a commodity because they don't know who you are yet, same as new apps can be. But once a reader has come to enjoy your writing, they tend to be willing to pay more to keep enjoying your work.

A great example is several fantasy publishing houses have begun putting first ebooks in series on sale for 2.99 to lure people in and get them to pay full price for the rest of the series. I've already gotten hooked on one series this way.
I disagree.

Criticizing the government when it is implementing a program poorly and wasting OUR money, is an important part of democracy. Blank is performing a valuable public service: telling the people that our money is being wasted, and giving the government a suggestion on how they can improve their efforts.

Steve Blank has done his part. If the government ignores this (as you suggest they almost certainly will), they are failing to do their part. Steve Blank doesn't owe the government his leadership.
Startup Quote: Paul Buchheit, partner, Y Combinator
I've used the Ruby spreadsheet gem with success. It's a bit old, but works ok.

http://spreadsheet.rubyforge.org/
1. The blog post links to a thread on comp.lang.lisp, which contains 3 or 4 posts about the shootout but was otherwise just nuts.

2. Eh, cataloging the type of wackos that hang out on comp.lang.lisp is something a lot of people enjoy.
Oh, totally agree. Didn't mean to suggest that grads have no experience. Plenty of them have loads of great work under their belts by the time they leave school.
If everything you do works, then you’re not taking many risks and probably aren’t innovating either.

- Paul Buchheit (@paultoo)

http://startupquote.com/post/3181814123
"public/private initiative" == "crony capitalism"
Admit it, cultural considerations will have their effect. And no culture moves faster than IT.
I've said it before - it's insane that more startups don't locate in Massachusetts in the early days. The Mass Connector can get you pretty decent coverage for around ~$250 a month. Live there, take the Megabus down to NYC for NYTM and funding, and come back. Sure, it's cold, but it's not the worst place to be otherwise.
Probably doesn't want people who are paying for it to know how much he's making. At least, doesn't want that to show up as the first thing in the search results when people search for it.
Profit, Lies, Theft, and Idiocy - designers and developers selling out
As someone who has omitted their college degree and left off that I'm currently in a grad program, you try that in retail and they ask "well, what have you done all this time?" The time needs to be accounted for.
The iPad has an on/off button in the notifications section of settings. I don't know if it will silence mail and other preinstalled apps.
$1000/month in nyc? This is for family right?

Could you tell what a new single startup founder should do to get health insurance in nyc?
Thanks
Just wait until "standard" English becomes text speak. When that happens the advantage evaporates. The plus side is that the vowels on our keyboards will get a rest.
That's all well and good until those recent graduates become the boss;)
To clarify: there are only 24 hours in the day. One man can do one man-year of work in one year. That would be you, the consultant. Regardless of how many clients you sign up.

Thus the lack of leverage - there is an absolute cap on what you can bill per year.
Wow, I had always been nervous about that, but I assumed I was being paranoid:
"Network Solutions may reserve domain names that are searched on our Web site for up to 4 days. During this period, these domain names will only be available to register at networksolutions.com" http://about-networksolutions.com/customer-protection-measur...
The best advice, as always, is: just do it.
For an employer there is a real cost associated with finding and hiring a new employee. The worry is that someone who is over-qualified is going to continue to be looking for higher-paid/higher-skilled work that is a better fit for them. That employee will also be generally less concerned about their future career path at the job they are over-qualified for, which can lead to reduced quality of work. In a customer-facing role at a retailer this can come through as a bad or passe attitude, which won't win over your customers.
Anther problem is the education that people choose. The world is full of "VCR repairmen", while everyone is using disposable bluray players.

I see it again and again, students pick silly, simple or just useless degrees, such as

* philosophy
* international relations (every single one of those wants to work for the UN, maybe 0.001% ends up there).
* arts, all kinds
* history (how many historians do we really need)

Don't get me wrong, they are interesting and entertaining, but just not very helpful when it comes to being employable.
How much for a single founder?
Obama's aware of this. His major legislative achievement so far is a bill intended to promote access to health insurance (though most of the major provisions aren't yet in effect) --- on pretty much the same model as the Massachusetts law which others here have mentioned.
Could you explain why access to health insurance (note: this is a financial product, and is distinct from health care) is a bigger issue than access to a paycheck?

I have survived just fine without health insurance. I know plenty of people who do so. Surviving without a paycheck is a lot harder.
I was able to find this article: http://summitbusinessnetwork.net/profiles/blogs/money-from-4... among others: http://www.google.ca/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=400+BC+cur...

I highly doubt the money supply was fixed. A better understanding of what is actually money might be gleaned by reading the first linked article above.

What I'd like to know is if the intent of posting this Socratic discussion on HN was to disparage profit or the other way round.

Are we still really arguing about whether profit is moral? Really?

Or is the theft and corporatism we see all around being once again confused with voluntary exchange between individuals?
Oh yes, didn't notice that. We offered VWO 3 month custom-plan for free, so assumed all services on the bundle are free. But great that you mentioned it here. (I now notice that only Visual Website Optimizer and KISSMetrics are completely free. Rest require some kind of purchase)
There is a term for that, in Czech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hladov%C3%A1_ze%C4%8F
European commission "Common Charger" for phones
I had an interesting conversation with a friend about this the other day:

Friend: Dude, check out this guys code, I haven't met him yet, but like him already, identified the problem as NP complete

Friend: (code link)

Me: yeah that looks good

Friend: too bad, I don't like hiring people older than me

Me: too bad that's illegal

Friend: yeah

Friend: I definitely do and have, I just prefer younger people in general, they're less likely to be stuck in their ways or not take direction

Friend: Or think, I know better than this guy

Me: but he might know better than you

Me: well meet the guy first

Friend: he's coming in today

Friend: I am open to that, I like to hire people smarter than me, as long as they know that I make the decisions and sometimes I will not agree
The biggest fear people should have is that in order to promote that they're doing a good job, funding will be made available to non-viable companies. You know the type, the kind that didn't pivot, poke, prod, or explore the marketplace in a way to ever become profitable.
Thanks, The long tail keywords is something i'll definitely try out.

I was originally referring to my site's conversion rate. About .5% of visitors buy my product for $25.
EFF Warns That FCC Net Neutrality Rules Are a Bad, Bad Idea
Am I completely blind, or is there no way to enlarge the image to make it readable?
PC manufacterers aimed at the mass market are on a tight margin. Bloatware is a where they get most of their profits. If someone offered bloatwarefree PCs (ad added an extra €50 to the price) would they be able to compete with the bloatware PC sellers?
Finally, real page numbers for the Kindle
I've had a similar experience with a HP machine.
However, don't blame Windows for this, Windows 7 by himself is a pretty decent OS, as long as you do a clean install. The version that cames preloaded on new machines is usually full of crappy applications that have nothing to do with Windows, these are installed by the provider (HP in my case).
The same machine with a clean copy of Windows 7 Pro 64 bits boots in about 1 minute.
~$250 a person. You can do group coverage through the Connector as well, but group plans are pretty easy to get through traditional brokers once you hit four enrollees. (You may have some employees covered through their spouse or school, but you need to have four enrollees with the same plan to get group rates.)

I'd recommend that startups in Mass/looking to move just have everyone pay their own health insurance through the Connector until you raise angel funding and scale up in people. (I set up the group health insurance when I led Operations at oneforty.)
I get the concern, but I feel like there's an entire Internet out there where a real name isn't required... The fact that you have to use your real name is apparent from the moment you sign up, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
I'm a Perl fanboy, and even I agree here. There's just no substance.
As a Londoner I'm curious, is it a legal requirement to offer employees health care or will developers just not consider positions that don't include health care cover?