skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Botter Reeves, one of my best friends and a great all-around computer guy (back when that meant being as comfortable with a soldering iron as a keypunch) had a hand in building this. He has fantastic stories of those days. I hope he gets around to writing them down.

I'll try and relate one of them from memory. I apologize in advance for getting details wrong.

Back in those days you didn't just put out a help-wanted ad for programmers and start filtering resumes. Programming as a professional barely even existed. Instead, you had to find people with the right mindset and train them from scratch. And you had to be willing to look anywhere for the right people. IBM had created the original Programmer Aptitude Test (PAT) and was giving it to college students, teachers, and just about anyone they could round up. The best-scoring testers were immediately offered a job in California as trainees for what was to become SAGE.

This was, I think, an office of Federal Systems Division and the job was really a boot camp where the trainees had to learn the principles of radio, radar, tracking, computers and programming. It was quite hard on most of them and people would wash out of the course as it become progressively more difficult.

No one outside knew what was really going on at FSD (even the trainees didn't know what they were really learning) but it was getting quite a reputation for itself.

It seemed a little cruel to send someone across the country (a big deal in those days) for a job that didn't last more than a few weeks. Botter assured me it was no problem. Even the wash-outs were in demand. Software Development Corp. had a recruiter outside the IBM building to offer them new jobs when they quit IBM.

The final, carefully-chosen test prior to graduating boot camp was to understand and explain how a certain subroutine worked. This subroutine was special. It was granted exclusive access to the tiny amount of core memory that was available (most of the memory was probably drum, iirc.) Its purpose was to monitor the results of the radar signals as the antenna dish spinned and piece them together to associate the individual signal samples with the correct objects (planes or missiles), and identify their altitude, speed and direction as quickly as possible. It was unusually complex, self-modifying code.

Botter said that few people could understand that code and fewer still could successfully modify it. Those who passed were ready to graduate and move on to work on SAGE.
North of San Jose, its only East Palo Alto that comes to mind as an area of crime/danger/social issue - and frankly EPA has been massively cleaned up and gentrified since Ikea was built.

Oakland remains a dangerous city, with large 'no go' areas after dark (and even some during the day). Yes there are some nice parts, Piedmont is very trendy and Berkeley is pretty mellow. But you can't deny there remains some very serious issues in large parts of the East Bay.
Truth and decency > etiquette.

I'll stick with these summaries as they're far less time consuming and often more to the point.

Good luck with your 'victory'.
The problem with the word hustle is that it has a few very different connotations.

Those who go far have moved beyond street hustling.
>alnayyir is kinda like an anomaly

Only amongst a sampling of sycophants. You wouldn't believe how much this victory blog bullshit does to discredit this community amongst lay hackers that aren't heavily involved in startups.
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It's important to point out that not everybody should be vaccinated - in a few cases, such as where your immune system is compromised or you have severe allergies, it's not worth the risk.

That sounds like your case, but bear in mind that you'll be relying on herd immunity, so you should be encouraging people to get vaccinated. If your health is that bad, I doubt you'll be very happy if you do catch something like chickenpox or whooping cough.
As you know, "right" and "left" aren't that meaningful, conservative vs progressive, authoritarian vs liberal are probably more significant oppositions.

I'll have a look to the group.
This is only true if he actually learnt what he did wrong. Looking at his replies to some of the comments on Reddit, I'm not convinced he quite gets it.
I'm not sure how you got elitism from what I wrote. I just mean that praising somebody because something they did generated some controversy is going too far in the opposite direction.
but LUA does not have any STATIC features.
This is really essential for writing large
apps.
"Important" is subjective. Compensation equals the intersection of supply and demand. There are fewer business monkeys than code monkeys, and demand is higher, so they make more. Teachers are more "important" than shortstops, but who are better compensated?

Nerds never seem to get this. If the MBAs are so worthless and overpaid, pick up the reigns and do it yourself... what's that? You say dealing with people is difficult? .......
"Releasing free apps and working on open source programs are great advertisements for selling a product, namely you. (Alternatively phrased: free apps are a loss leader for selling your time.)"

This seems like a really backwards approach. If you can code, create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income. Then you'll no longer need to sell your time at all.
I don't know what he meant, but I can imagine how an infographic could demonstrate both her skill at design and her skill at programming — it's just that this one only really even tries for the former.
This would be targeted for CS students without any prior knowledge on web development.
You've always been able to edit your own questions and answers to your heart's content. It's other people's content that everybody's getting a (moderated) crack at now.

The guy complaining about SO seemed to be ignoring that he was capable of this as well (I think the implication was that it requires such speed that it's only practical for nutcases who hang out at SO all day), but he certainly could have done the same.
I think it makes a lot more sense to pursue 'quality of life', both for yourself and people around you. I agree that pursuit of profits is healthy, but only because it forces us to focus on building systems that both improve quality of life AND are sustainable. Focusing on the numbers instead of the substance of what you build or provide just sets you up for misallocation of your time and energy on many levels, even if it's effective in increasing those numbers.
Coming soon to the GIMP.

And Krita.

And... ?
> Truth and decency > etiquette.

Not according to the guy who runs the site:

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Good luck with your 'victory'.

You know what I'm most proud of? It's that I get a chance to work hands-on with and serve a lot of people. I answer pretty much every email I get, I reach out to help people whenever I can, I look to serve, and I do cool things with good people.

And yeah, my life is pretty good individually, too.

So seriously, next time you feel like calling names, why don't you channel the energy into reaching out to someone to help them? Or to building something? Or maybe start your own blog, and share your insights on there? Or go build a productive business? Or contribute to a nonprofit?
Thanks for answering.

You continue to ignore my legitimate concerns, however.
I understand why this might make an uneducated politician happy. What I don't understand is the incentive for Adobe to do it. Was there ever a danger of restrictions on image editing software?
I found Opera's Web Standards Curriculum from 2008. Going to take a look.

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web...

Also found this monograph -- Teach the Web -- where several experts were interviewed about how to teach web professionals.

http://teachtheweb.com/monograph.php
My first paid app has only got a few hundred people using it. I've gotten a lot of work from people stumbling across my free web apps, which have been used by millions of people. I'm very glad I released free software.
So we have the website equivalent of spam. A simple solution would be to have a secondary page labeled "We think this is spam" where all the banned links would reside. Anyone who needs to see what's there could always dig in.
That's supposed to be a picture of his last race, which he finished in 4h21m59sec according to this (Dutch) article: http://sport.be.msn.com/running/nl/nieuws/?Article_ID=492504
I don't feed trolls
If you're a technical founder, with some interest and understanding on how to create some buzz around your app and get in users - I'd say, you don't really need a business / non-technical founder early on. Though, at some stage when you start scaling up, you will need someone (could be technical or non-technical) who can help on the business side. Andrew Chen's recent post has some good points on this -

http://andrewchenblog.com/2011/02/05/stanford-cs-major-seeks...

"What do geeks really need help with? It’s very simple- there’s a class of purely business-related stuff that adds value:

selling stuff and making money
getting partnerships and marketing/distribution of the product
funding the company
scalable marketing/monetization strategy (ad arb / viral / freemium / etc.)
team recruiting, particularly of other engineers and disciplines (not other MBAs please)
If you are an expert at any of the above and can show it, then there’s a lot more value. Very few business folks, particularly newly-minted MBAs (with the exception of Stanford folks) or industry-switchers can really deliver on these though, which is why they’re not bringing much to the table.

Then there’s a class of things that are much more product-oriented, and while it overlaps with the skillset of some engineers, if you have great skills in any of the following, they are clearly valuable too:

design, especially visual design
UI/frontend skills – HTML/CSS/JS – even if mediocre!
copywriting within the product for help text, marketing, etc
user research and customer development
usability testing."
Y Combinator vs Seedcamp - Paul Graham nailed it?
>"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."

I was civil, and I was marking the post for what it was. I've gone out of my way to explain my opposition to this charlantry and instead you saw it as an opportunity to paint me as unhinged, rather than merely concerned about the community.

You no longer deserve an explanation, you robbed yourself of that with your political games designed to make me look bad.

You may enjoy my summaries in silence, or you can keep drawing attention to me. It's up to you. You won't get any more effort at explication out of me though, no-how.

>You seem to hate me personally

Not at all, you're one instance of a class of plague that furthers the disinterest and apathy of talented people in startups and entrepreneurialism.

They will peruse HN or similar communities for a time, run into non-content such as you post, and run screaming.

Your existence and those of your ilk serve to harm the startup industry and give the corporations more leverage to hold onto the truly good hackers.

People like you have done more to make my efforts of making fellow hackers aware of opportunities in self-employment, startups, and entrepreneurialism more difficult than anything else.

Worse than the global financial crisis, in terms of how often I hear a given excuse/reason, for not considering alternatives to their current jobs.

I'll keep molding my bread, even if it isn't pretty.
That's just another trick to make you a more convincing salesman, like smiling. Of course they drill that into your head during the unpaid training for Cutco, and hey, those knives are pretty badass, I still have and use my demo set. It doesn't change the fact that I feel like "Well, if my product really is the best on the market, what do you need me to tell you for? The truth is out there, it doesn't have to come from me." I'm perfectly comfortable with giving a list of facts about my theoretical product and why it's awesome, or making people aware of its existence, what I'm not comfortable with is making a story to get you to want it or pressure you into believing everything I say, and I definitely don't like rhetorical devices used for selling.

Yet even PG's advice is product-focused rather than selling-focused; can you distinguish PG's advice from a simple bulleted fact-list? (And how well do you think that alone will sell your product?) If your product isn't the best on the market (or so you think), taking PG's advice would tell you to get back to work while a hustler would go out and sell it anyway. (They don't even necessarily have to lie about anything.) PG's approach echoes the traditional programmer reply of why he doesn't need a marketing team or need to study marketing by saying "My product will speak for itself."

Anyway, can you link to an essay or post from PG where he said that? A quick Google search didn't turn up a source.
Here are the slides: http://codespeak.net/svn/pypy/extradoc/talk/microsoft-jan-20...
I did the Cutco thing too. I did kind of feel like I was selling people things they don't really need or want, so I got out of it. So I kind of agree with your there.

I moved on over the years to sales involving multi-million dollar transactions, always involving very high pressure negotiations, and that allows a more detailed look at the true value of the salesman (broker).

A salesman isn't someone who tries to sell ice to Eskimos. He needs to be a leader. He needs to understand his field, understand his customer at a deeper level than what the customer is verbalizing, and help lead customers to actually attain their interests.

Think of it this way. A salesmen has a seller, who is offering something of value at a price. He tries to get a buyer to pay that price, by explaining why what the seller is selling is worth the money. He's a broker, bringing people together who legitimately have value to offer each other.

If he gets good at that he can sell his services for a good price, and do well for himself.

You can do your own research on the right smart phone for you, and even the right car; sometimes it is very helpful to have someone who specializes in a product or service help you understand why it's in your interest to purchase it. It is certainly in the product or service creator's interest to pay for such an excellent specialist.

That being said, a lot of salesmen are scum, or useless, or both, and fortunately those guys never really amount to much.
Samsung seem to have really gored the Apple community's oxen by having the temerity to challenge the iPad with "a big phone" and an Android phone at that.

This guy's estimating 225 thousand sales total and getting featured on Daring Fireball.

This app stats & analytics company on the other hand saw 0.9 million activated in December alone, basically tied as the second best selling android device.

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/54035/Android-Special-Report-Is-S...

Since Samsung originally thought they were going to sell a million in the last three months of 2010, then upped that target to 1.5 million I'd say they were doing okay.

Personally I have no need for a 3G tablet, since I already have a phone I'm paying for data on and could tether, but those in the market for such a thing seem to like it as much as or more than the iPad. I did the research because I consider buying one to use as a jumbophone (this capability was removed for the US market) but it was just slightly too big for me. I'll settle for one of the next generation of 4.5-5 devices (and probably a cheap Tegra2 wifi tablet as well).
Install Android 2.2.1 Froyo On iPhone 3G / 2G Using Bootlace in Cydia
Yep, that's the kicker - as long as everyone else gets their kids vaccinated. Does the "endangering your child's life" part count the risk of a major epidemic due to other parents making the same decision?

If everyone else is refusing to vaccinate, that's exactly when you should vaccinate, because your child is much more likely to catch chickenpox or the measles with a whole bunch of unvaccinated kids running around.
Both this question and many of the answers really, really pissed me off as a free software developer (free, not open source). What's written below is referring to my chief app which has tens of millions of free downloads [0].

I write free software for the same reason people help old ladies cross the street, crying mothers find their kids, etc. I write software that saves people in time of need, that makes them sigh in relief and say a silent prayer of thanks to whoever it was that wrote this application that made their day so much easier.

I write free software for the karma, the brownie points, the feel-good feeling.

I don't write free software so people can buy my paid software (of which I have none). I don't write free software to avoid responsibility or support (I provide free support in forums, with tens of thousands of posts). I don't write free software to "experiment" or to learn (I'm a professional developer with 7 years of commercial systems engineering under my belt).

That said, the open source zealots piss me off just as much, if not more. I'm always being asked "if it's free, why not make it open source and give back to the community?" [1] What about the word "FREE" doesn't include giving back to the community? Why should I release my years of hard work, research, and effort to people who will take it apart, line by line, take from it what they want, repackage it, or take away the little attribution I get from the software itself? Sure, if I were a bigger man with a bigger heart, maybe I would... but I'm not and you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Just because I choose not to charge for it doesn't mean I'm going to give away the source code for free, especially for software as complex, critical, and well-researched as mine.

0: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/software/comments/cp84s/the_new_vers...
Nothing wrong with releasing free software, but if you're going to use it as a promotional vehicle, promote stuff that makes you money while you sleep (paid software), not stuff that eats your free time (consulting).
It's Saturday night/Sunday morning and I think I'm the only idiot who didn't go out and have fun after weeks of hard work ;)

Can I direct you to a discussion of these topics here: http://visionon.tv/forum/-/message_boards/view_message/45043

If the responses there don't answer all your questions, please come back to me. In fact, email the sukey team and address it in the body "attention [redacted]" or contact me via the address on the About page on beyondclicktivism and I promise you I will make sure that each and every one of your legitimate concerns is addressed.

Security is highly important to us and if we have failed to communicate that clearly then we need to do better.

We are receiving literally thousands of emails, tweets and phone calls, including requests for interviews and clarifications from press around the world.

We have a shoe-string budget, no equipment beyond our own personal phones and laptops, no office space beyond what we can borrow for free. None of us are paid for our work on Sukey and many of us also have full-time careers.

Please be patient with us. All concerns will be addressed as soon as possible - but there are only so many nights you can do without sleep :)
A mountebank? Seriously? I can see a point of view that the article is promoting sociopaths as something desirable, but a mountebank?
This sounds like Underpants Gnome planning.

1. Create a few good paid apps

2. ????

3. Get enough passive income that you'll no longer need to work

How is merely creating a good app and charging money for it a solid plan for making more than a few bucks? Unless my understanding of the software industry is very far off the mark, the app has to target a good market, fit that market well, be sold effectively to that market and have a good support system in place that works without you participating — and if you're missing one element, the others have to be hit a lot stronger. Am I wrong in your experience?

Contrariwise, free software has no barrier to entry at all. Just being free is a marketing campaign in itself. You're much more likely to get wide adoption with free software, so if you don't feel capable of marketing and supporting a product, it at least is good advertising for your skills.
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I think this point (about it being good to promote yourself) is aimed at people who aren't yet in a position to get a lot of work (I made most of my free stuff when I was still in school). If someone already can fill their whole week consulting then it's a no-brainer (in which case free software is more for filling a hobbyist desire or whatnot).
"create a few good paid apps and start generating passive income"

I think we need look no further than patio11 to see just how hard it is to make "good paid apps" for a living. We love seeing the Angry Birds runaway successes, but it can be a slog and really slow going. People just starting out can work on free apps as a learning exercise during or just after college and get picked up by a big name company doing great stuff.

Alot of mobile development companies recruit people based on existing experience making apps. Some app makers push their app development services more aggressively than their released apps (alot of them give their apps away to show off their skills to potential clients).

Perhaps the free app maker's ideas aren't polished or just not good enough to stand alone, but the functionality may wow someone looking to take on a technical co-founder or hire a lead developer to produce a bankable product.
Totally agree.

> lead customers to actually attain their interests.

This is something I just don't like doing at all, also you're not leading them to their optimal interests and so there's some inherent trickery involved. Yes, sometimes salesmen can amplify personal insight, but mostly it's just a matching up of interests toward a zero-sum game.
Is there even a need for this person in a small startup?

I guess it depends on the nature of the startup. If your startup is a threewords.me type thing, then maybe you don't need a "business person" early on; you just need to launch the app, promote it a bit, and if it goes viral, slap some ads on there or what-have-you.

But if your startup is a B2B enterprise software startup, and you're a purely technical founder with no background in sales, marketing, prospecting, lead generation, etc., then I'd say you absolutely want a "business person" on-board from very early.

I recall reading that 37 signals doesn't hire anyone who doesn't have a strong technical skill set; no one whose only role is to manage others.

Just because they're "non-technical" doesn't mean their only role is to manage others. A "non technical cofounder" could/should be participating in: doing customer development, developing a marketing strategy, prospecting for leads, closing sales, finding funding, negotiating funding deals, doing business development (partnerships, etc.), developing a channel strategy, talking to channel partners, etc., etc., etc.

What should a non-technical cofounder bring to the table?

Again, depends on the situation. What I'm looking for in a non-technical cofounder includes:

experience selling enterprise software, experience developing marketing strategy, experience with customer development, knowledge of positioning, existing relationships with potential customers and partners, relationships with potential investors, and the ability to sell ice to Eskimos (or Bibles to the Devil.)