skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, that is a better analogy, but the technical bar for streaming audio is very low -- far lower than understanding the music. You'll be seeing a lot more consumer oriented uses of our data in the near future that stream music.

Developers interested in making a 'pandora of the future' should read about our deals with 7digital, IDJ and play.me/dada that handle the content side of things:

http://notes.variogr.am/post/1373556723/the-future-music-pla...

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/09/when-data-and-music-me...

http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/idj-echo-nest/

For example, 7D has many millions of songs available for on demand streaming -- and you can get their IDs from us in API calls. Here's a pandora style playlist for KFW with 7D IDs, sorted by increasing tempo and only popular artists that sound like KFW; when we say things like "we have more data, we can do more" this is what we mean

http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/playlist/static?api_key...
I tend to have them maximized, which blocks the clutter, but, then, the maximize (or "let me focus on this") button never worked properly in Macs. This is somewhat addressed with the full-screen apps on Lion.

When I have to use more than one window, I use the "Always on top" option on the WM. Since it's usually a terminal, I can make it small and leave it near a corner or on another screen.

Having said that, Xcode seems fond on lots of windows. I don't think my approach would work.
And then, one day it clicked. I don't know what exactly caused it but it was as if the light had been turned on, I suddenly understood the program that I'd just typed in and* all the ones that I'd been typing in before it. And the next program I typed in was one that I came up with, not one from the exercises*

That's exactly what happened to me, and you're the first person I've ever seen express it.

I was about 10/11 at the time with a Vic20. I spent quite some time with nothing really making sense. No specific memories, just that I didn't really get it and was close to getting bored with the whole thing. My next memory is that suddenly, I got it. One minute I understood nothing, then it all made sense. Some window opened in my mind and understanding flooded through, an experience I can't explain and have never had since.

Here's how my story differs though - Once I was midway through high school I became embarrassed by my affinity with computers. Bit of a social stigma I spent the next 15 years trying to avoid, working all sorts of different jobs trying to fit in somewhere. It wasn't until I ticked over 30 that I was able to admit it (writing code) was the one thing I kept coming back to; the drug I'd been addicted to for the last almost 20 years, but tried to hide from.

And now here I am, almost 40 and I've just got myself a cofounder, we've registered a company and I've spent what's been (so my wife says) a lovely Sunday sweating in the hottest room of the house (the study) working on the beginnings of a new life. And I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. Sad, isn't it :)
Swisslaunch: A Swiss Y Combinator clone
I searched for your HN mail in our jobs thing and did not find a hit, but nonetheless I'm very sorry if this was our mistake. We love to hire interns, and interns love us. Please write me -- brian@echonest.com -- if you're still interested.
Also great for this - the Send to Kindle Chrome extension.
Cut the Zombies
I'm in England and for "online dating" I see:

Sponsored #1: Match.com
Sponsored #2: top10bestdatingsites.co.uk
Sponsored #3: matchaffinity.com
Ranked #1: plentyoffish.com
Ranked #2: dating.guardian.co.uk
Ranked #3: eharmony.co.uk
Ranked #4: mysinglefriend.com
Ranked #5: loopylove.com
Ranked #6: flirtbox.com

I can't locate okcupid in the first 5 pages (at that point they were all no name sites) this seems strange to me, is ok cupid #1 for you?
In languages like Ruby, the benefit of having a data structure written in C often outweighs the benefit of having a more appropriate data structure in the same complexity class, when it's written in Ruby. So there's no reason to consider using a trie, or some other interesting data structure, if the default hash table is written in C. And if you really cared about performance you could write that part in C.

And if you have a specific need it's often just as good to create a side-table rather than some intricate thing built out of nodes and pointers that you would have in C.

When you need something like a sorted dictionary, the sortedness is often just a feature of the underlying database, if it's a web app. It's fairly rare that you need things like randomly accessed sorted maps for stuff that isn't already in a database.
> Invalid username, it is too long or short. Please go back, and try again.

could you tell me what is wrong with it, giving error messages where users have to figure out if its a or be is not nice.
Instructions?
I followed a very similar pattern. I got stuck at DOS 5 and BASIC. At the time, I had a C book but my 286 couldn't run the compiler. Also, I couldn't run Windows 3.1. So I stopped learning and picked up the electric guitar.

Like you, I've come back to it full force in my 30s. Programming has invaded my brain, and shapes the way I think. I have rekindled the excitement I felt as a child and I won't let go of it again.
...if you add up the number of hours that I've spent in conversation with editors, compilers and debuggers over the years...

I'm afraid to do that. I would probably be shocked by the number, and then would quickly calculate my lifetime rate, which would probably be about 28 cents per hour. This is the thing non-programmers never understand; programming takes a lot of time.

It's like a drug.

Great analogy! For me, there's no bigger high than the exact moment of the conclusion of this process:

NothingThere + IDidSomething = SomethingThereForTheFirstTimeEver!

That process, the act of programming is something that I need to do.

Sometimes I think this is the difficult-to-define missing requirement for software success. Some call it "passion". Some call it "determination". I call it "I can't imagine doing anything else".

but it has all the components of a 'real' program, input, computation, output.

Don't forget storage. That was the killer feature that got me hooked. You could write a simple program, store the result (on a disk!), come back later and build upon that result. Before disk storage, computers were toys. After disk storage, they changed the world.

there is nothing that can't be learned.

I've never had a tatoo, but if I did, this probably would be it (backward, on my forehead).

...all you need to be is a little bit better than you were yesterday and to keep doing that for a long time.

This advice:

1. is excellent. Maybe the best you'll ever read here.

2. is not intuitive. Most people don't get it. Like compound interest, it's hard to wrap a human brain around it.

3. is universal. It applies to almost anything you can do.

4. is very difficult to teach. As soon as you think people get it, they don't. They stop measuring their own deltas and resume comparing to perfection. Grrrrr.

5. the single most important thing I've ever programmed in business turn-arounds. The best dashboards and report writers I've ever written are time-phased; they clearly show improvement over time, which is almost always more important than any snapshot:

Losing + Improvement + Time = Winning

Beware of that bug though, once it bites you, you'll be hooked for life.

To this day, whenever I need something for myself and can't find it in 5 minutes, I build it. It may not be the most effective way, but I just can't help myself. There must be a (3)(2)(2) program for people like me.
Not sad at all (that you're working right now). Sad perhaps that you tried to avoid computers for so long.

I wonder what people like us would have done in BC times ("Before Computers"). I doubt pure algorithmic math work or sciencey research really would have cut the mustard for me.
It would definitely be more a multi-page, hand-caring, to the point tutorial rather than a full-fledged book.

The goal here is to get started quickly, not to become an expert.
How to set up a SISC scheme webserver w/ tomcat on debian
Sinfonia: A New Paradigm for Distributed Systems
great writer, good setup .... and he gives a good reason why windows user hate apple (and what liam neelsen should do about it)
On the menu: How to name a restaurant
I'd imagine those would be very easy things to check. Per the article, the meteorite was identified as being an exceedingly rare (9 on earth. Total.) CI1 carbonaceous chondrite.

I suspect the claims will likely be debunked, but not for the reasons you gave.
for me, programming is a creative tool. In pre-BC times I guess I'd have pursued art, sculpture or some other creative endeavour.
Sure, but it's still an interesting collection of papers. I rather enjoyed perusing the articles. A commendable effort by Mr. Huang.
What do you think about the Anthropic Principle? Not only in the sense that the physics of the Universe is just right for complex life to exist, but also in the sense that if aliens 'got there first' we would never have been allowed to evolve to our current state? We don't observe alien civilizations because if they existed we wouldn't!

Life on Earth took almost 3 billion years to go from single-celled organisms to multi-cellular ones. 3 billion years is almost as long as the life of the Universe (~13.7 billion years). There's one data point that suggests that there was a big filter in our past.
I have karma to burn, so here it goes with another hard truth:

There is a big, undeniable, compelling reason for Apple to distrust us iOS developers: as a whole we're incompetent bumblers. I'm talking about security. The number of iOS developers who do things like transmit the UDID (Universal Device ID) in plaintext, or who "encrypt" their communications by doing things like zipping it (no encryption, or the same key for every client) then "securely authenticate" it with CRC32 is just jaw-dropping. In terms of doing things with just a competent level of security, large numbers of us are screwing the pooch in ways that severely contaminate the pool for the rest of us.

Of course, this points to the ultimate incompetent bumbler in this regard: Apple. Apple should've built a better security library -- one which makes it harder to use security in an incompetent way. (Forces you to do security right, or the API doesn't work at all.) For heaven's sakes, they require you to muck with 3 objects just to shift a date from one month to the same day-number the next month. Some better support in security might benefit the iOS developer community just a bit more than the ability for our apps to work smoothly in both Julian and Gregorian calendars.

I plan on making my living through iOS in the next year, but Google seems to be way ahead of Apple with regards to security.
When scores seem too good to believe
I think that Steve Jobs himself has already set the groundwork for breaking the ties with (a local computer copy of) iTunes down the road.

Jobs talked about Cars and Trucks. The desktop, and many laptop computers, are trucks. They can do the heavy lifting, converting, number crunching, graphics processing etc. Tablets and smartphones are cars. Calling them "automatic transmission" cars is probably even better. The learning curve is low, the uses are "limited" compared to the trucks but most people don't need a truck for their everyday lives.

The MacBook Air is on the threshold. It's a device that looks like a truck and has the inners of a "sportscar" with a truck-style processor, but the interface of the truck. It's manual transmission but not useful for all truck jobs.

If Apple could ensure that everyone had a data plan maybe they would cut out iTunes. Of course, they still make a nice profit on all those Macs...
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"They"? You mean "he". It's the difference between Venezuela and Norway, and also the reason why it won't happen.
Why Data Structures Matter: left, right folds, btrees
Large Hacker userbase.
Reporters typically say "interesting" when they're afraid of being sued for saying "nutbag crackpot".
What is a dickbar?
Finally, here is a technology I can get with. Most of the web entrepreneurs seem to embrace a "Field of Dreams" breed of business plan: build it and they will come. And when they do come - advertise, upsell, follow, track and slice and dice the hell out of them! Thanks, but no thanks.

But saving millions of lawyer hours a year? Realizing substantial savings on significant business costs will always prove valuable. Win for society, win for technology, win for capitalists. While I wouldn't say that lawyers are parasites, reducing the proportion of lawyer cost strikes me as highly positive for the economy.
I didn't have much of an opinion on this new feature until I read that comment. It reeks of hubris.

The presence of an uproar from your users about a new feature, or your users nicknaming it "dickbar" are also signs of an "inelegant implementation".
Google App Engine, JRuby, Sinatra and some fun
Ask HN: Is anyone interested in gitapps.com?
I've unfortunately been squatting on the gitapps.com domain for two years. I originally registered it to create a site to support pluggable git-based web apps, but have sadly never had the time...

I'd rather someone did something with the domain rather than just continue to sit on it like I've been doing.

If you're interested, then just email me <tav@espians.com> with a one-liner of what you might do with it and an offer. I'll transfer it over to the most interesting email at the end of the coming week...

Cheers and good luck in advance to whoever takes it on!

p.s. yes i'm aware of hntrades — but it seems to have had very little activity in recent times...
I used to have the same impression that there weren't many devs over 40, and if you found one, they were likely to be a little senile.

I've now realized that this is more due to the corporate (or wanna be corporate) environments that I've worked in. Such environments really suck the life out of you and are rarely conducive to staying passionate about software development.

My assumption is that people passionate about development don't stick around more than 5 years in these environments and either move to smaller startups or go independent soon after.

I think .NET developers like myself almost exclusively see this type of environment in the jobs that demand our skill set. All the more reason why I'm focusing on learning Ruby, NoSQL, iOS, and Linux in my spare time.
I'm in a similar boat, doing ediscovery/cybersecurity validation tools. Not quite YC's cup o' tea, I think. (And figuring out whose cup o' tea it is is one of my challenges.)

Have you looked at any of the Federal grant programs, in particular, SBIRs? If you fit, that's some pretty easy money...

Drop me a line, if you don't mind, I'd be quite interested in hearing about what you're doing, particularly given your background. dkovar - gmail.
How to travel the world without packing or carrying luggage ever again
Some advice on commecial real estate: find a partner in the business, and I don't mean a broker, I mean an actual, experienced investor who can do deals with you.

Levered real estate is no joke, and despite the seemingly simple nature of the business, there is a ton of nuance that can get you in trouble.
Hear, hear. I'm hacking on a project on a Sunday morning and having a good time. I used to fill these gaps with video games.
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Well, if you need examples, look at Android, which has frequent malware scares:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/03/01/the-mother-of-all-an...

(not a slam on Android, but just the natural progression - if you allow anything, someone, somewhere will abuse the privilege)
Both of my technical partners in my venture are over 40 because a) I am over 40, b) I needed to find people I knew and trusted, and c) they're very experienced and very solid. If I was still living in SV, I probably could have found a younger dev partner (and may be looking for one soon) but the local area, despite having two universities, doesn't have any/many appropriate development partners. (Anyone in Central Illinois reading this?)
If you literally want to get behind it, let me know ... I can throw in "hold lawyers, SaaS providers, and vendors accountable for the quality of their offerings in a court of law."
People get hired into an R&D position doing financial modeling when they've never heard of a Gaussian distribution?
Eight Key Problems Every Startup Should Anticipate
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GCFS: a Garbage-Collected Filesystem for Linux
You actually do have work experience if you've been building your own company for the last 6 years. Do you have anything to show for it? If so, that's your resume. If you don't...well why not? That would be your real problem, not the lack of work history.
It is more than that. The latest estimate I've seen says that Amazon has 58% of the ebook market, while Apple has 9%. With every Kindle book bought and every day that passes under the status quo, Amazon's leverage grows. They have no interest in forcing a confrontation even a minute early.
Your argument actually shows that weighting by volume is a necessity if you're trying to represent people's experiences - which are driven by the likelihood that each given video they want to watch will play - not by the abstract number of videos in each format.

Some of your criticisms are valid - they're just minor and missing the point.

We're never going to move past the PC if we have to drag along all the legacy. Most of that legacy exists to solve incidental issues and complexity than offering end users with real capabilities. Far from
not being what I wanted to hear, the things you list are all in that category.

You'll always be able to score points by saying 'but my PC does XYZ'. But the world in which we endlesskly drag along everything from the PC-era however crummy or hard to use isn't one I'd want to advocate for however much of an Apple hater I was.
grooveshark? nobody ever seems to mention them. hell, people even put out spotify first and they are _still_ not on US turf.

show some love for an awesome service that probably doesnt show up in any list next to lastfm and pandora because it already beat everyone.

#Grooveshark #WINNING
I just hope those scientists are careful about introducing alien bacteria to Earth's ecosystem.

If we find an alien bug via a meteorite, then that bug was one of the reigning champions in terms of ability to survive and subdue its opponents. It would have the capability of subduing our entire ecosystem leaving humans scrambling to try to remove it, contain it, then adapt to protect against it.
Not sure why you guys decided to hide your real contact details. It might help build more trust if you'd done otherwise.
Wow that's hard - only because I really think the experiences would be VERY different. Imagine you are sitting in exchange MBA program in Hong Kong learning first hand about the economic policy / human rights differences between China and the US (and thus seeing the opportunities and experiences one would have if choosing this path). On the other hand, what if you decided to bootstrap and build the next great healthcare revolution in the US? Both seem like totally awesome ways to live your life. Personally, I favor the bootstrapping because truthfully (and selfishly) I want to contribute to building more ethical and innovative companies - that is my passion.
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Yeah that's the point I'm trying to make I think - I get programming when others don't (even without practice, the practice just made me a lot better). And as much practice as I give it I don't get much further with guitar.
A piece of advice for my former self: contributing to open-source software is way easier than one would think.

For long, I was afraid to contribute to any project because I wouldn't understand the whole structure, and I didn't know where to ask.

Then I started using Qt and submitted my first bug report. The bug was fixed in like, 10 hours.

Wow.

Then I submitted another one, but this time I looked at the source to understand what was wrong and suggested a way to fix it.

Then I actually sent a patch.

Then I signed up to the mailing-list, and started talking to people on IRC.

But my real epiphany was with KDE. When I saw my first commit into KDE's trunk, even though it was a tiny one line bugfix, it felt so great. I started wondering : why didn't I do this before?

So, if you've never contributed to OSS, go ahead. Pick a project of interest. Get yourself on the mailing list and on the IRC channel. Ask questions. Find stuff that needs to get fixed. Help others. And get those bugs fixed.
nyt works with adblock for me, but after you read 5 pages you have to clear the nyt cookie or it forced login
I can't recommend niches for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I strongly believe that all of the niches you can find make money. Seriously, you see the same ones on every affiliate site and if they didn't work, they wouldn't keep putting them up there.

If you believe in e-cigarettes, if you believe that through whatever channels you try for you can reach smokers who would like to try e-cigarettes, and you believe you can get enough 'buyers' to make your spend profitable (eg: $20 on ads and $30 in sales) ... then e-cigarettes are the niche for you.

Well, within reason - you've then got to turn your faith into facts via testing.

Second, because I'm only in the very early stages of my affiliate marketing 'career' - I have a lot of background experience from working around brilliant world-class affiliate marketers, but the devil is in the details. I'm not yet confident that I know the niches to move into if I gave you advice I could be steering you down the wrong path (every niche makes money, just got to figure out how).

Your best bet to have real experts teaching you the answers on where & how to get started is probably something like warrior forums.

Also, check out Mike Colella on mixergy http://mixergy.com/mike-colella-adbeat-interview
Dublin Business School
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What does this have to do with startups? If you're an entrepreneur there are times you wonder how you can get through the tough times. This post helps put that into perspective.

Most profound thoughts I think I've ever read on the interwebs. Hard for me not to get emotional reading through them.
A friend and I had a conversation about this phenomenon a while back that he called a 'matrix moment' - referencing Neo's "Whoah, I know Kung Fu!" line.

We both had similar experiences as we learned to program, the most vivid one being OOP - it went from practically no understanding to all of a sudden being completely able to understand what and why.
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What is probably most significant point of this article is that he has enjoyed programming for that long and still enjoys it, and gets to do it. It is refreshing to read that, amongst all the craze for startups, somewhere folks are interested in programming as a hobby, as an art. And not just high school or college but life-long. I certainly think that just like music, art, sports there is an aspect to programming which is as fulfilling as these art form. And more than the end goal, the act itself is also filled with purpose and fun.