skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Thanks. We are bootstrapped and cash-flow positive. I guess the angel route makes sense.

Regarding running the service in a private cloud, my only fear is that it could turn out to be a can of worms i.e. a support nightmare. Are there any SaaS services that currently provide that sort of service?
That's the first thing I thought: A Nerd Fort in Porn Valley?
I appreciate your suggestion, though I think I'm in deeper trouble than that. Mindless physical work like gardening seems to free up cycles for me to ruminate, which I have to actively suppress (à la "He took a duck in the face at 250 knots" -- http://books.google.com/books?id=-O3r6D1KutAC&pg=PT36...).
A better analysis is PISA's own analysis, which refers to specific instructional practices in different countries and other differences in country conditions that make a difference in educational outcomes.

http://www.oecd.org/document/2/0,3343,en_32252351_32236191_3...

After edit: It probably is worth pointing out, in this context, that I speak and read Chinese and have lived in various parts of the Chinese-speaking world. I have Chinese-language textbooks of mathematics at home from more than one country, and I am confident that young people of any "race" can learn math well if they are taught with materials like those, because I am a math teacher by occupation and my classes include a very ethnically diverse group of students, who thrive in the classes and far exceed the meager expectations of United States classrooms.

Another good response to what is wrong with mathematics teaching in United States classrooms comes from Patricia Clark Kenschaft in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society volume 52, number 2 (February 2005).

http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

Eric A. Hanushek, Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann point out in their paper "U. S. Math Performance in Global Perspective: How well does each state do at producing
high-achieving students?"

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_Hanushe...

that the real problem in United States mathematics education is leaving behind too many of the high-ability students, of whatever ethnicity, compared to many other countries.
Semi-hidden feature:

"red/black trees" -> "redtrees.com", "blacktrees.com", "red-trees.com", "red-tre.es", ...

Also, http://domainzomg.com/somedomainname should work if you just want to fire off a quick query.

Caveat:

Domainzomg is really a brainstorming tool, so it just uses DNS lookups and a fairly permissive list of TLDs. Red definitely means "taken", but green doesn't necessarily mean "available", it just means "this domain doesn't seem to have a DNS entry". Check with a real registrar for availability, use domainzomg for brainstorming.
WSJ corroborates the mini-iPhone, says Apple may make MobileMe free
Nokia: 'Our first priority is beating Android'
I'm eager to use Clojure professionally but Python is more practical. Another case of the "worse is better" syndrome.
Sounds like her biggest problem is this:

However, I was always hampered by self-doubt. My initial conviction -- essential for anyone who wants to make it as a scientist -- that I could really make a difference, maybe even win a few prizes and get famous, eroded when I realized that my brain was simply not wired like those of the phalanx of Nobelists I met over the years; I was never going to be original enough to be a star.

Seriously, what the hell does this mean. I believe this kind of confidence problem could be fixed by better mentorship earlier in life and perhaps a cultivation of a more hackerish mentality.
How the War of Words Was Won in Cairo
Crysis 2, leaked 49 days early
A Thinking Ape is hiring engineers! And HN dedication is a plus!

> and it would be a definite plus if...

you are registered at and regularly read Hacker News (and send us your username if you do)

http://www.athinkingape.com/jobs
I disagree, the networking benefits you get from a good coworking space more than make up for the cost.
For a completely technical-minded person who is responsible only for algorithms, and not keen on customer support and such, might not burn out due to a movement among departments.
haha, omg. that scream is terrible.
Some institutions have eliminated tenure (especially in biochem), but run into the problem that you have to pay a lot more to get good scientists in that case, because scientists don't place zero value on tenure.

You may not even be able to get them at all, because there's a widespread perception that non-tenure-granting universities don't offer much academic freedom (especially in biochem, where they have strong ties with pharmaceutical companies). I could be wrong, but I don't believe these institutions have so far been successful in attracting top talent.

One hypothesis is that corporate research labs already occupy this ground well enough, so non-tenure-granting universities don't have much competitive advantage when looking for talent. If you don't care about tenure, want a higher salary, and are willing to accept the fact that management can review and direct your work, why work at a university at all? Why not Google Research or the R&D division of a pharmaceutical firm?
They definitely need a new design. I really like the "broadsheet" style of their site, but it badly needs to be cleaned up.
A membership in a coworking location in DC runs about $300 month, and you don't have a dedicated desk, at least in the place that I was a member. However, the social interaction of the place and other amenities made it worth the cost (if for no other reason than all the referrals I got through there).
I've taken two. The first one (10 months) I met my boyfriend, spent a couple weeks in Paris, and generally did nothing of importance. It's exactly what I needed. That's okay!

The second one (8 months), I tried a startup but didn't get far. (I am not the type for a large solo project.) I spent two months in Turkey. I wrote a third of a novel (that I'm still working on.) I worked on learning Turkish.

Honestly, I'm not ashamed that I didn't do anything of major value. I found true love, that was enough for me. :)
Pittsburgh is pretty much all of those. Insanely cheap housing (I pay $400 for a 2br - with no roommate, just me.) Access to the best young talent around (Pitt, Carnegie Mellon, + numerous other schools). Relatively low crime rate, and it's named the best city to live in fairly often.

The only downside is the weather, which isn't that bad in the winter -- certainly much better than Detroit or Boston.
This article should have had Legos and Lisp in the title.
Isn't this what source escrow is for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow
if you find yourself thinking about anything, stop, and look up at the clouds till you recover

I'll definitely have to try that more often! (Though there's a good chance it'll be stars rather than clouds...)
This is pretty cool as there isn't much like this in the SFV. It would be nice if there were some photos so we could see what it looks like. I've been to co-loft in Santa Monica a couple times and am hoping this is similar. It would be nice if they hosted some meet-ups like co-loft does as it would be a much closer place to nerd out for people that live closer to SFV.
Go on a camping trip for a few weeks or months. Stay away from electronics. (Maybe go visit a foreigner-friendly tribe in Africa?) Or sink into your lowest depravities until you get sick of those and decide you want to program again, though I can't vouch for that.
An amazing thing with a few weeks of notice and pre-launch publicity.
I've always felt that people's best bets are in places like Chicago, which have good tech economies, while having a healthy range of living costs. You can go anywhere from a very cheap apartment or condo on the far north side to living it up on the Gold Coast.

Places like SF, Boston, Manhattan, with their exorbitant costs seem to add a lot of unnecessary pressure when trying to build a startup.
What is the point?  Math defended ...
Good times are better for working at startups for one reason - switching costs are lower. When you know that if $employer runs out of cash but you can find another job in a week, there's very little risk involved as a startup engineer.

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 if [...] Apple should be the caretakers of how customer's use their own phones

This is Apple's modus operandi with the iPhone, is it not?
Headline: "Nokia to get 'huge' payments from Microsoft"

HN participants: "oh noes, that person just said 'M$'! must vote that down because clearly that is a baseless insult!"
Yes,

Considering that the EU also recently paid Nokia to keep developing Symbian, my naive thought is the EU would be very interested in this.

http://www.unwiredview.com/2010/11/02/explaining-symbeose-sy...

But I would easily admit my naive ideas about could be wrong given the many things that happen under the radar these days...

Edit: Elop denies being "the seventh largest Microsoft shareholder" despite being listed as such but confirms the level of share-holding which the list has. He's certainly not the seventh largest share holder of any kind, he certainly holds far less than Bill gates but it seems clear he is the seventh largest individual shareholder with ~$3 in shares.
That's kind of a stretch of an interpretation, don't you think? I always thought that the Earth was still physical in the way that we usually think of it, and humans were just part of its physical operation rather than being simulations.
This sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing people are inclined to tell themselves because hanging out with the geek crowd at a coworking space sounds more fun and more ego-gratifying than getting some bleak office somewhere. Starting a company gets bleak. Deal with it. It only gets bleaker if you don't.

If I wanted social contact, I'd (a) start or attend meetups, and (b) work out of a coffee shop or the library. I wouldn't pay a $100-$150/mo(!) premium for it.

$200/mo sounds like a decent price for this, though, especially if I wasn't super-committed to my company.
I would highly recommend traveling without a planned timeline. I was in a similar state you were last August. I quit my job and booked a ticket to fly to Madrid, Spain. I didn't have a place to stay until the day before I flew out. This was how it went for every city I visited afterwards. I didn't book any travel or accommodations until the day or two before. It was awesome to take off or stay when I felt like it. It felt like I was in control of my life.

I spent the next two months traveling through Spain, Italy, France, UK, and Ireland. I met some of the most amazing people in my life and I still keep in touch with them. I went running with a bull in Valencia, scuba diving for the first time in my life in Nice, had the most amazing pizza in the world in Naples, and got my geek on with Roman history.

At the same time, this cured my burn out. I didn't think it would, but when you start using other parts of your brain to communicate and live with people who don't speak your tongue your mind opens up.

I also wrote about every city I visited on my blog as a travel log of sorts and as a way to show my friends what I was up to. I started in Boston which you can read here: http://paydrotalks.com/posts/103-boston-clam-chowder-pigs-an....

I wish you the best of luck. Being burnt out is a horrible state to be in, but it's awesome that you're taking yourself out of work to treat yourself.
Readability bookmarklet, for those who haven't heard of it before: https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets/

Actually that's not it, I don't think. WTF arc90 got rid of the old readability bookmark; I don't want to sign up for anything.
The problem is not with "startups". The problem is with scaling - there is TONS of startup activity going on in the Toronto, Waterloo, Montreal, and Vancouver areas. If you look for it you'll see that it's thriving as more and more people consider startups to be viable career options.

Very few of these companies manage to break out and go big - when the dotcom bubble burst, all of our former giants like Nortel and Corel imploded, leaving only RIM to pick up the pieces in the tech sector.

There are reams of tech companies in the $1MM-$300MM space, a few in the $300MM-1B space, and basically one (RIM) in the $10B+ space.

Getting capital to scale aggressively is a huge problem - it's just not as easy or as free-flowing as in the USA. However, foreign financiers are starting to notice that they can get better returns on Canadian companies because of a paucity of funding, so I'm hoping that will improve things over time.

Otherwise, Canada is a fucking awesome place to start companies. We just need more people with the balls, the drive, and the unwillingness to accept no for an answer when it comes to raising money.
Photos please...
You are being too unkind. I think Elop has already finihsed his job.
I hope you aren't expecting startup code to be a lot better. Not only will startup code tend to be crappy, but you run into a ton of people (managers and coders alike) who will all but insist that your code be a certain level of crappy. In other words, if you write good code, then you've spent too much time on it and should have moved on to the next project.

I don't mean to give you the impression that your new job is going to suck. If you chose the right startup, you're going to have an awesome time. But I also think it's important to be realistic.
Er, she worked in the UK where tenure was abolished in the late 80's.
Sony Ericsson Unveils Xperia Play at Mobile World Congress
Many of the emails in that article are ordered newest to oldest... not a great link.
> He needs to practice riding and get in better shape for a month or three first.

I disagree. He can bike as far as he wants each day, at whatever pace he chooses. You don't forget how to ride a bike, he may be wobbly for the first few minutes but he'll be cruising soon after.

Practice and fitness aren't needed. All you need to do is be able to ride. He could start off biking 5..10...20KM per day if he wanted to and slowly build up as he gets in better shape as long as you plan your route accordingly to make sure you have a place to stay.

> and some knowledge of things like patching a flat tire.

This is true, but nothing you can't learn at a bike shop and a few patch repair kits can't help with.
Plus, an office in Monadnock is hardly bleak. I was really surprised at how reasonable their rates for starting offices are.
B E S T article about Nokia/Microsoft. And actually, I am quite sure they will follow the strategy mentioned by Mike Elgan.
I do use Clojure. I'm not working yet, so its only for personal projects. However, I've been using it on all sizes of personal projects. I especially like using it for web scraping.

I do want to be using Lisp, mostly because it is giving me a chance to experience programming in a new way. The only really new thing I've learned is a sort of mental click on how programming functionally feels. However, I've also been exposed to a lot of new concepts. I don't think I've had any sort of enlightenment, but I do think I've improved.

The only other people I know who use Lisp are people I met after starting Clojure. It has some really awesome people lurking in its IRC channel.

As to whether or not the Lisp love is group think, I have no idea. I can tell you that most of my teachers in college don't even know Lisp exists and I'm the only student I know who is using it. Subjectively, my teachers don't seem very competent to me and my fellow students don't seem to program outside of the classroom.

I can tell you that Lisp doesn't seem as readable as python, but it is still fun to program in. I don't regret that I'm trying out Clojure.
I've only ever had to do the I-want-a-raise dance, and when I heard about the tiered scale, it was like a beacon of light from Jesus.

If I ever interviewed for two places, and they were equal on all parts, except one had a tiered scale, I'd pick the tiered scale in a heartbeat. Wouldn't hesitate one bit.

The biggest problem I've found with asking for raises is that I don't have a clear career path. I can't look and see the minimum I'd be making if I stick with the company for 15 years. I think the tiered path would be much better for employee loyalty and holding on to institutional knowledge of coworkers.
”By the time the browser has downloaded, parsed and compiled your smart compiler, my dumb parser is done rendering the template.“

Your dumb parser may be quick the first time, but when you have to render a template 100 or 1,000 or 1,000,000 times the cracks will start to show. One main benefit of parsing and compiling templates is that you can cache the result of that stage on the server.

If you want to be really smart about it, the client shouldn’t even be downloading a .mustache template — it should download a .js file containing a pre-generated function which can be called with the context, returning the rendered template. Parsing the template on the client side makes about as much sense as parsing JSON or XML with a hand-written pure-JavaScript parser.
I already understood that he wanted to change the question so that he could answer it more easily. But I asked a pretty specific question, and I'm curious about the answer. There's a lot of companies on this list. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if most of them didn't rely on IP protections, someone would have called me out on it already.

Conclusion: most YC companies are significantly dependent on IP laws to operate.
Hi. I agree with some of the others that you sound depressed as well as burnt-out. I've also seen that you have few encumberments.

What I'd suggest is learning to surf the ocean. I don't do it personally, but a lot of my good friends are surfers from Victoria in Australia.

There is a good perspective amongst surfers. They may wonder who the fuck you are at first, but once you've wormed your way into their scene, they are most welcoming.

Good luck... you need to chill out, have some wild parties and come back refreshed.
Kinect Tangible Table Prototype
I could care less about test scores and baseline performance in measured tests. What I care about is drive, inspiration, motivation, and innovation.

Sure, the US doesn't have a monopoly on any of that, but I'm not ashamed of what our best and brightest are doing.
And there are much cheaper office spaces in Chicago.
Completely agreed (on Khan Academy team).

If you check out the video from that article (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw5k98GV7po), you'll see a lot of the strides we're making in the areas of individual assessment (mathematics only at the moment), guidance (full breakdown of hints for every problem we dynamically generate), alternate explanations where comprehension lacks (list of all relevant videos next to every problem the student encounters), encouragement (badges and other game mechanics), and more.

As you said: it's ambitious, and we're far from the end. But we're making progress every day and seeing extremely positive reactions in all the teachers and students from our pilot programs.
Riding when out of shape gets real uncomfortable real fast. He'll want his own bed for that at first.
I'm moving from California (where I work mostly in-office) to Austin (where I will continue to work the same job, but 100% remote), and I have been looking for things like this in the Austin area.
As an autodidact interested in far more than I can learn in my lifetime I'm always on the lookout for the easiest path to learning. After struggling to find an acceptably easy path with Khan I dug up some alternate videos that gave me more direction. Am I really an autodidact? It just seemed the most concise word for my self-driven learning. If I don't fit the definition then I should go find a new word. :)

> Clippy

Ha ha! Yes. But I don't think we need defer this until we have strong, general AI. There are steps that can be taken now, with more coming in the near future. None of these will be "the" solution, but they'll be way ahead of where we are now.

Example: currently schools have "remedial" programs in various subjects. A student having trouble with math is assigned to the remedial math program, but not other remedial programs. Ok, now extend that idea by making it more fine-grained, both by topic and proficiency. Algebra would have several areas, each with separate proficiency levels. Design curricula for each area/proficiency, and a reasonable assessment method for placement. Collect feedback on time taken and right/wrong to improve curricula and assessment. No AI, but way better than what we have. It's not at all practical in classrooms, but it's very practical on computers if it's done on a large enough scale to warrant the cost of producing such a system.

And thanks to you and others, I will probably revisit Khan Academy soon.
parsing JSON ... with a hand-written pure-JavaScript parser.

"eval"?
I'm actually quite aware that I'm distorting things with these "bullshit excuses" but they seem so believable, much more so than their negation! It'll probably take deliberate practice to unlearn this habit.
Microsoft to pay out 'billions' as part of Nokia deal
Sell your unused GPU cycles
I disagree with this entirely.

1. Stop comparing yourself and/or others to Mark Zuckerberg...it's an insult to both parties.

2. School is useful for connections and work ethic, but if you need neither, than there's no reason to cling to the dying ideal that school = security.

3. Any skilled hacker can find enough freelance jobs to support himself (or herself) while he builds a side project.
Students you are probably not Mark Zuckerberg, so find yourself who you are! (then decide about school)
I'm just gonna drop this here, because I think it will appeal to the geeks here.

Last Emporor's "Secret Wars", which is a fantastical tale about a battle between his favorite emcees and his favorite Marvel comic book characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SPjPGeYlMU

What if I had the power to gather all of my favorite emcees With the illest comic book characters and they became arch enemies? Inconcievable? Unbelievable? Yet as wild as it seems The Emperor and Stan Lee would coach the two opposing teams
I think most of the myth is about the 1950s Eisenhower era, when Germany, Japan, China, and S. America weren't competing at all with our own economy. It was significantly less competitive then and for a brief period of time we were a powerhouse, but over time that has faded.
I read a book about some guy who decided to bike across the US. His entire exercise before setting off consisted of one, aborted, 20 mile ride, to try out his bike. Instead of cutting every oz. he could while packing, he packed a fifth of Jack Daniels for the evenings. Basically he just set off across the country on his own terms, and his own pace, and had a grand adventure crossing the country.
"do you need to learn how the engine of a car works before you can drive it?"

No, but you'd be a much better driver if you did.

Understanding the basics of a science, especially math, is extremely important to fully grasp the higher level topics. I don't believe one can conceptually understand a topic without understanding the fundamentals that it builds upon.

Unfortunately I see philosophies as you describe in my local school system (Chicago Public Schools), especially in poverty stricken neighborhoods. High school kids are given scientific calculators and taught algebra/pre-calc when they can't even add or multiply single digit numbers. Similarly, there are pushes to move more "computer learning" into grade school, despite extremely poor reading and math proficiency.

I can draw parallels in my job as well - it's remarkable how poor most programmers' basic math skills are. Someone who can do the chain rule is regarded as a genius. With only a strong grasp of fundamentals, I feel that many engineers could be substantially more successful.