skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I upvoted you because you are obviously right but at the same time I’m once again astonished by how fascinated HN readers are by tangents about the linked website’s design. It just seems so irrelevant and pointless and has nothing to do with the content. It’s off topic and mean spirited, especially in a case like this where the author doesn’t give any advice. (It’s a bit different if the author writes about usability or design.) If you can’t read it don’t comment and don’t upvote.

One nice comment about it (like yours) might be ok but eight? Seriously?
Then my second point still stands. Seriously, just get out of town for a while. That's an achievable goal in itself. You don't have to expect anything from it and you don't need to make grand plans.
I agree that science (or any creative) productivity is non-linear, but you go on to give a linear example of 30 hours of work being worth twice as much as 15 hours, so I'm not quite sure what the final point is. An obsessive/single-track mindset is the most striking thing to me about this type of work, which probably does require more than 37.5 hours each week to maintain, but perhaps not every week, and almost certainly not in the 80-100 hr/week range that some young researches tend to work.
Some people talk about getting angel investment to "guarantee" your survival, but it doesn't - really, it doesn't.

You want to put your code in escrow, and have an agreement that if your company folds, the customer gets full access (not necessarily ownership) of the code, and has the right to the engineers' time necessary to get it and keep it working.

These sorts of things are standard in some industries. Get an hour of free consultancy with an appropriate lawyer, and it will work easily. Talk to your customer and say that you are sufficiently confident to give them full access to the code in the event that you can't deliver. They get the full blast of your confidence, as well as the assurance that it will all work.
AI is extremely distracting for me. I can't wait until it can handle my drudge work, so I don't take those tasks very seriously. And believing progress in that field will be very noticeable in 10-20 years can influence a lot of plans and priorities.
eval is evil. JSON.parse() is fine - neither of which is a "hand-written" parser written in JavaScript.
The article says pretty much what I've been thinking: too many choices, consumers have no idea which Nokia phone is any good.

However, I'm not so sure that this thinking is any good in the long run for Nokia, everybody says that company X should emulate Apple, it is just the easy thing to suggest because Apple is currently winning.
This sounds really stupid on its face, but try taking Vitamin D. While it certainly won't fix any of these problems, I found it helped my mood a bit and generally made me feel better, health-wise. And worst-case scenario, it does nothing and you're out $10.
"Once thats iterated over, and an acceptable base created, it begins to populate the world with starting civilizations of elves, humans, goblins and megabeasts. After that, it runs a history and civilization simulator for about a 1050 years. Entire civilizations will rise and fall, cities will be destroyed, legends created, monsters raised into god hood in that time. One of the most famous stories has been of an elf child being kidnapped by the dwarves, being accepted into its society to finally become one of the most famous Kings ever known. You can read the legends of your make believe world, to find out who rose, who fell and what really happened. At this point you have about as much back story as a Tolkien-esque world."

O_O
"it would never cross my mind to make a blanket statement that all engineers should work at startups" --> I completely agree. In fact, such blanket statements about almost any kind of advice is often naive.
Ballmer absolutely ridiculed Google for making Android free. A couple of short years later and Microsoft goes with a negative price.
Cute, but the prefix notation in LISP is not purely aesthetic; it is related to the fact that lists were stored in a first-rest (car-cdr) pair structure, and thus function calls (a list including the function itself and all its arguments) could be broken into the function and its list of arguments, using mechanisms already present.

I suppose you could then define car-cdr as a last-rest pair, but there are reasons aside from linguistic ones to want the first of a list to be the prominent one.
Do many people actually give up control of the company after raising Series A? I can't think of a single reason why I would do that.
Do you know any companies that provide source code escrow services and how much such services cost?
Recessions are built over a relatively long period of time (at least longer than your average engineer stays at one job). So by the time a recession hits, a good engineer at a large company should have accomplished something of significance.

The author's argument is not that chaos doesn't exist in large companies, just that it is far more frequent at a startup.
Not to mention that even the most gangsta of gangsta rappers still have songs on their albums that are focused on telling stories in a poetic way. Even 50 Cent, who's one of the most anti-intellectual of mainstream rappers, writes lyrics like "God's the seamstress that tailor fitted my pain."

People write off hip hop, and it's really unfair. Sure, there's a lot of crap out there, but if I wrote off rock music because of Fallout Boy and Creed, I'd be seriously missing out.
You know... that sounds simple and cheesy, but I think it might just be what I need to regain my curiosity. Thank you!
> Each and every course at MIT has put up all their educational documents including slides, exercises, tests, audio, video, schedules etc for free. Many courses also include video and other multimedia artefacts.

Just to prevent readers from taking that statement literally, only a small minority of courses offer all these materials. (e.g., see [1]--you can see by the icons on the left which materials are available for which courses.) Most only offer lecture notes, and even those are generally very incomplete.

What MIT has done with OCW is outstanding, and I personally have learned a lot from many courses already, but they still have quite a ways to go to meet such a comprehensive claim. More funding and enthusiasm for the effort is still very much needed.

[1]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/
I do think the videos are excellent, and I'm very encouraged that you're in the process of addressing these other things. If you keep the same commitment to quality that you've done so far then you'll do just fine.

Edit: I just watched the video and I am seriously impressed. This is the right direction. I will be trying this out soon.
Reading your words almost terrified me. Just as my brain projected my thoughts onto the wall. I consider myself an intelligent person, with plenty of time on my hands, yet I don't find a thing I could passionately do. I have a girlfriend for 4 years (I'm 20), I know programming languages, have a couple startup ideas. But nothing outstanding to love.

Not sure how many people are in the world like me or us. I'd like to know how they cope.
Tesla launches closed-loop battery recycling in Europe... and it's profitable
That's not very fair. Unless you're fortunate enough to be working on your most passionate, most world-changing idea right now, I don't see the problem with taking an exit. Many people have passions outside of their company, so what's wrong with taking the money and using it to fund another project?
To elaborate on what nocipher said: The problem is not that people are getting their names on projects to which they didn't contribute much[1]. The problem is that hiring committees only care about new scientific works you are producing and not about other ways to contribute to science such as fixing typos, pedagogy, etc. If you want to incentivize such work, you either need to change the criteria upon which universities hire (unlikely) or give supplementary rewards such as cash prizes (possible).

[1] Yes, there are times when it is hard to tell who contributed what to a scientific work. And sometimes people get too much/little credit. But this isn't a massive issue, nor is it something that can be fixed by adopting an OSS culture. Software is often much more modular than science is, so it is often possible to put individual names on commits. But at those times when software is more like science--such as when several smart people are sitting around designing over-arching ideas/structure/strategy for a large project--then software faces a similar difficulty in teasing out individual contribution.
> but green doesn't necessarily mean "available", it just means "this domain doesn't seem to have a DNS entry"

You really have to make that clear. That's worlds different. Are you looking for an SOA record for the zone or are you just running gethostbyname on the domain itself (both very different as well)?

I own several domains that I'm not actively using, but they are in the DNS with an SOA record and no A/AAAA.

Another item of feedback: Can it be done without inserting every incremental search into my history? I played with it enough that my Chrome history was hosed and Back was fairly useless.
Alternatively, don't buy their first one.
"The Daily" gets the ax
I'm in Saskatchewan. Around here, it seems that there is a fair bit of startup investment but it's not quite the same as a lot of the programs in the States. Looking at things like TechStars or YCombinator startups, many of these startups are Great Ideas. Investment around here isn't nearly as focused on Great Ideas, but rather much more focused on Great Technical Secret Sauce. This shifts the types of startups that get funded; around here, there seems to be quite a bit of Biotech, Renewable Energy, some "hard" Computer Science-type problems, etc.

Would Twitter have been funded here? Not likely. Freshbooks? Not likely. RIM? Possibly.
America was a genuinely high-growth 'emerging economy' until ~1950, and then by sheer coincidence experienced another few decades of economic dominance thanks to the destruction of WW2 and the rise of communism in eastern Europe and Asia. The 'glory days' were quite real, at least economically. As for other claims, it's easy to feel optimistic when a rising tide is floating all boats.
On repeated compilations: Of course, hence the “Compiled Templates” requested feature.

On being "really smart": These are design goals different from mustache[.js] and can be freely implemented in any other templating library if people want it.
Are All Engineers Better Off Working at Startups?
Wow, these "why entrepreneurs should..." articles weren't very to good to begin with. Now, they are just outright silly.
who needs pisa, just talk to people, watch tv and realize how crazy the gov. fucks around with its citizens but nobody wants to miss glee so they just let it happen. no need for a pisa study to explain how lazy and in avg maybe not dumb but ignorant we are.
But even those "low end theorems/experiments" are generally novel and build on fairly cutting edge work. On the other hand you can pick up an Introduction to RoR book and have a successful career without ever venturing outside what that book teaches. There are few science jobs that require no knowledge beyond what you'll find in a first year chemistry book.
Any logical being would play with the idea of financial freedom. And it is unlikely in a "regular job."

Not like it's likely in a startup.
The source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/eff-releases-report-de...
I wish there were more options like this, and not just in US. Even if you are a freelance or a one man startup, working alone isn't always as good as it sounds.
I think you can certainly reach certain levels of wealth only be selling a company you own. But, I am not sure joining a startup you don't own doesn't give you a hugely better chance of wealth. Especially if you are not one of the first 5 employees or some very high position. Let's say you have the skills to be a VP Engineering of a startup or a engineering manager at Google.

Let's be generous and say you get there after a series A and make 100k/year startup and get ~.5% ownership subject to dilution. Compared to that Google job making 175k a year plus bonus and stock options. Let's be conservative and say total compensation of 200k. In 5 years you are forgoing $500,000 + any return on asset you made. That startup has to sell for $10 million without taking any more investment for it to be worth it.

Obviously this is possible, but it's not clear which one is better off most of the time. Like the article says- do a startup if you want to do one. Not if you want to get rich. If you want to get rich go be a quant at a hedge fund.
JSON Template was around before mustache came around, it didn't win then, I don't know if it will win now. I want to improve the Mustache line, not make people switch to something else.

As an alternative, it looks good, so thanks for bringing it up.
This seems to be mostly FUD, here is the HN discussion about it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2212555 (I don’t know why it was manually dead-ed.)
The annual review isn't a discussion, it's where your boss has decided what to write in your review and tells you about it. At that point, you need to change someone's mind, rather than form their opinion. The performance review is too late.

Wow, this is incredible advice. I think many of us (myself certainly included) make the mistake of conflating "time to hear about performance" with "time to hype my own performance". Thank you; my annual review is coming up at well, and this instantly transformed and matured my understanding of all the moving pieces.
> The most important part of working for a startup is choosing the right one...

Ya I couldn't agree more... It's one topic that I would like to see covered more often is how to identify the right startup from a prospective employee perspective.
It is no more likely in a non-regular job. In fact, it might be even less likely.
Bingo. Dismissing Khan Academy because it's currently mostly known for videos is just as dangerous as dismissing any tiny HN startup that's focusing on a core idea and, once lessons are learned, iterating from there.

We're not arrogant enough to think we'll start out by building a generic AI solution to education.

We do know that we have a) a lot of video content that students are constantly watching, b) dynamically generated math exercises that students use to practice every day, and c) some very encouraging in-school pilot programs.

We're using those experiences to learn and expand. The YouTube video linked in the article shows the edges of our progress so far.
> but the energy seems to evaporate once I get down in front of my keyboard again.

The internet is a great tool to avoid self-reflection.

Generally, if something saps your energy whenever you use it, that's a good sign to use it less.

> I think my mindset is holding me back.

Only one person can change this, and it ain't any of us on HN :)

> It's almost like I would be doing with the expectation that this would "fix" me, and that anything short of that would be a waste.

Try letting go of this expectation - they just set you up for failure. Go get away from your keyboard (travel) and enjoy yourself, and trust that perspective and insight will come.
All of this 'Nokia is doomed because of their Microsoft partnership' talk reminds me of when Apple announced something similar back in 1997. Anyone remember this Steve Jobs talk from when Apple was on the financial ropes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY

If you think Nokia is doomed, you might want to re-watch that video. Things didn't turn out quite so bad for Apple.
Great advice. The most important part of #3, "stress how much more you’d like to do going forwards" isn't highlighted enough, however. That is, you have to establish clearly what you're looking for. The template is:

In X months I want to be making Y. What needs to happen for me to get there?

Part of any employee's job is to manage expectations. This way, you're both communicating your expectations to your manager and clarifying theirs. It also adheres to the "no surprises" rule by giving prior notice.

Then, you need to occasionally ping your manager to see how you're tracking towards your goal. This gives you an indication of progress, and uses human bias towards consistency (as described in Cialdini's "Influence") to your advantage. If your manager has been telling you that you're on course for the 150k you asked for over the course of 6 months, it'll be difficult to suddenly reverse when decision time comes.
I can't perceive the difference between domainzomg.com and instantdomainsearch.com. The latter is using plain old ajax. Theoretically I'm not even sure if I should see a difference. A plain old ajax call will get sent on an existing sleeping HTTP 1.1 connection, and should take 1 packet each for the request and response. WebSocket can't get any better than that.

tl;dr: Request/Response model on the web is already fast enough for small data. Use WebSocket where it matters, like a firehose of updates in either direction.
Ask HN: Weird ranking ...
As I write this, this item:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2213180

is three hours old and has four points. This item:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2213723

is only 19 minutes old, and also has 4 points.

By my understanding, item ranking goes as points divided by a time exponential. By my reckoning, the second item should therefore rank higher than the first. Same points, but newer.

And yet it isn't. The first item is ranked 63rd, the second is ranked 69th.

I know that linkless submissions (like this one) get "punished" with a lower ranking, but what's going on with these two?

Help?
That's not to say that there isn't startup activity though. In Saskatoon, there's definitely a push to try to make it easier for freshly-started companies. Some examples:

* A new "affordable small office space": http://www.facebook.com/pages/Centro-Office-Lounge/170719902...

* Coworking space with advisors (lawyers, accountants, business consultants, etc) for low cost: http://www.saskatoonideas.com/

* Lots of startups have offices at http://www.innovationplace.com/index-main.html - This is more for companies that have already established an income stream, but is a good common place for companies to grow.
Ask HN: Good books about malware forensics?
I've enjoyed some recent HN submissions about Stuxnet. In particular, it was fun to watch a youtube video where Microsoft security specialist Bruce Dang recounted his experience investigating stuxnet [1].

Can anyone recommend any good books where experts describe their experiences investigating malware? A while back, I enjoyed Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg [2] and am hoping there might be similar stories about malware.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOwMW6agpTI

[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/0743411463
If I was a CTO of a large company that was subscribing to a small startup's useful SaaS service, I'll much prefer the startup to have solid financial backing than having access to their code.

The hassle of getting engineers to manage the code and keep it up to date isn't worth it (with all the legal gray areas surrounding IP). That's what I was trying to avoid by going the SaaS route in the first place.
"That said, as an engineer being a startup "employee" is a sucker's game. You'll never get enough equity or intangibles to compensate for the risk/effort/opportunity cost."

As someone that just left a startup I couldn't agree more...
> No, but you'd be a much better driver if you did [learn how a car engine works]

Yes, but one simple computer animation could give you the same understanding of the engine as if you had built the engine yourself. Computers can give you an understanding of calculations in addition to doing the work.

> I don't believe one can conceptually understand a topic without understanding the fundamentals that it builds upon.

This is probably the biggest argument against using computers to calculate for you. However, if you haven't already, watch Wolfram's video that I linked to above as he clearly explains how this belief is not necessarily true. The very rudimentary basics will need to be learned by calculating, but anything above the fundamentals can be understood without the calculations.

> Similarly, there are pushes to move more "computer learning" into grade school, despite extremely poor reading and math proficiency.

I think this computer learning is different than the learning I'm talking about. Schools currently use computers as a medium to enhance the current education system. They use them to make calculating more interactive and fun. I think that computers should actually do the calculations, rather than "tricking" the students into doing the work.
No, it's a feel good alibi to cover the slaughter of the natives.
This is true, but it has always been true. Google has always sucked for product review searches, local service vendors (try finding a plumber anyone?), travel searches etc. The odd thing is why people continue to use it for all these things. Perhaps the ads?
Look at it at a higher level. Convore, to a certain extent is like Wave.
One commonality between many successful dropouts like Zuckerberg and Gates is that they dropped out to do something specific, not because they were too lazy or undisciplined to finish. Had the right opportunity not come along, I suspect many celebrity dropouts would have cruised to graduation.
There's a lot to be said about directed learning, totally. I wish I had a mentor growing up. But I've given up on easy learning.. that is, I've picked a lot of low hanging fruit and now I want to learn about quantum mechanics beyond an intuition level (I'd like to do the complicated math), so I have Feynman, Dirac, et al. What I like about Khan material is the brevity, but that doesn't work for all subjects. In the book department Schaum's Outlines for Stuff tend to fit my style well; I like having worked examples so I can pick up the patterns. If only I could just implant knowledge into myself with a chip-to-brain interface as in the Matrix!

If we did away with state-controlled curricula I think that'd help in itself. Even the schools where you supposedly "learn what you want" have workbooks you have to follow very orderly to "pass the material". The nature of state-curricula leaves it up to the arbitrary decisions of boards and a handful of teachers instead of experimenting and doing radical changes and letting individual teachers do their own thing to see how it works out. But this is all for a classroom setting.

There are lots of places we can use HI (human) more effectively... The whole Stack Overflow / Yahoo Answers model is great too, adding an interface to auto-connect people via webcam/mic/screensharing would be nifty instead of a series of text messages.
http://Conjunctured.com. I'm a co-founder. 1st day is free! :)
I find that having the "guts" to leave the school to pursue a personal goal is more important than staying in and wait for thinks to happen.
Students: You are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, so pay $200,000 to put up with old-fashioned syllabi and badly-designed courses employing poor methods of evaluation and professors who do their best to make feel as mediocre as possible!
Yeah, it's pretty easy to mod but time-consuming. Great for prototyping, but I really like the themes and grid system for JQuery mobile. Speed over http may be a concern with both, but I'm judging from iphone 3g testing
It's a buyout! Without having to involve those pesky governments!
He is, at most, the ninth largest known individual shareholder. He can't get rid of said shares for regulatory reasons. Please see the discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2212555.
I doubt MS will extend this deal if they are successful in the market whereas Google would find it hard charging for Android.